


The Scavenger Bride

by the-reylo-void (Anysia)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (not really though), Alternate Universe - Princess Bride Fusion, Angst and Humor, Banter, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Ben and Rey take turns being Westley and Buttercup, Childhood Sweethearts, Developing Friendships, F/M, First Love, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Friends to Lovers to Enemies to Lovers, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Reunion Sex, Reunions, Revenge, The Princess Bride References, True Love, fairytale adaptation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-06-27 04:28:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15678018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anysia/pseuds/the-reylo-void
Summary: After a fairytale summer romance, Rey of Jakku sees her beloved, Prince Ben Solo of Alderaan, off to his uncle's temple, only to learn of his death at the hands of the Dread Knight Ren, a feared warrior who never takes prisoners. But fairytales are never quite that simple, and Rey soon finds herself swept up in a game of political intrigue that threatens to tear the galaxy apart.With new lifelong friends (thieves, but who's counting), mostly-dead ex-boyfriends with too many names, a grumpy wizard who wants nothing to do with any of this, and POUS (Porgs of Unusual Size), Rey's got her work cut out for her and will need her wits, strength, and the strange force she's felt inside of her for years to find her true love.(The Princess Bride AU you never knew you wanted.)(This is a kissing book.)





	1. As You Wish

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for joining me on a crazy and likely ill-advised journey into the Princess Bride AU no one asked for! It's been a fun challenge adapting Rey and Ben/Kylo to fit The Princess Bride, as the characters don't fit neatly 1:1. What I've developed is something that's very much inspired by the tale rather than a direct re-telling, with a lot of tongue-in-cheek references and subtle nods that'll hopefully be both recognizable and enjoyable.
> 
> Please feel free to join me on Tumblr at the-reylo-void and I hope you enjoy the story!

**THE SCAVENGER BRIDE**

\---

**Chapter One: "As You Wish"**

\---

_Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away…_

\---

There are many lands in the galaxy that are idyllic enclaves, with towering forests, rolling pastures, and shimmering lakes, portraits of pastoral serenity and a peacefulness that defies description.

But even the most nationalistic citizens of Naboo and Chandrila would defer to the beauty of Alderaan, the shining jewel of the Core realm. It is a peaceful land, bordered by snow-capped mountains, with silver-blue rivers carving through green, flowering valleys. The air is fresh, the water clear.

Equally noteworthy are the people of Alderaan, for here too beauty and serenity flourishes. They are a fine, upstanding people, well-born and well-heeled, graceful, to a one evidence of the finest breeding and bearing…

“...ow. _Ow_. Fuck.” 

(...there are, of course, exceptions to every land, and this is where our story begins.)

\---

Rey winced and sucked irritably at her pricked fingertip, glaring at the wild thornvine still wrapped around the fence in front of her. Two hours’ work in the fields clearing brush, and one prick saw fit to ruin her fine mood.

“You aren’t clearing all that by hand, are you?” 

Rey sighed and rolled her eyes. _Make that two_.

“Lost the shears about a week ago,” she shot back over her shoulder. “Lots of things have gone missing out here in the last few weeks. Metal and high-grade glass, mostly. I think you’ve a band of scrap thieves coming round. You should post guards tonight and ask about, see if there’s anyone in the settlement wearing new finery who shouldn’t be.”

The fence creaked as Prince Ben of Alderaan leaned against it, looking down at her with eyes the color of dark whiskey that always carried a soft intensity. “Do you still have any contacts among them that might give us leads?” he asked. “Scavengers, I mean.”

Rey narrowed her eyes at him, and he winced. “...sorry.”

“I haven’t led that life in years, Ben Solo.”

“I’m not saying you have.”

Rey gave him one last glower and went back to carefully disentangling the thorns from around the fence, ignoring Ben’s watchful eyes on her. It was a sore point, her past — separated from her parents scarce out of swaddling, she’d spent years stealing and scrapping her way through the western deserts of Jakku before earning just enough coin to strike out for kinder lands and search for her family.

But she’d lost her way in unfamiliar territory. The road had taken her to Alderaan, where, half-starved and delirious with hunger, she’d been caught taking down a hind on the royal hunting grounds.

She’d been all of twelve summers, terrified and little more than a handful of ribs, as she was hauled before Her Majesty Queen Leia.

Rey had held her head high, expecting death.

Instead, she’d been given a job, a warm bed, a full belly, and — most importantly, far greater than she could have ever hoped for — kindness and warmth. From the royal family, no less.

“You have dirt on your cheek.”

...well.

Some of them.

Rey scowled at Ben and scrubbed at her cheek with her free hand. “I’ve been in the field all morning. The gingerbells will be blooming soon and the thornvines are taking run of the place. It’s important to trim them back before they take hold.”

Ben frowned. “Don’t we pay people to do that?”

“Yes. Me.”

“We have a full complement of gardeners. Who’s telling you you have to work out here for your bread?”

“I work around the estate to help your _mother_ ,” Rey emphasized. “Speaking of which, have you been up to see her yet? You’re home early.”

Rey started as the winding thorns choking the fence post slowly began to move, almost as if guided by an unseen hand, unfurling and untangling, relinquishing their grasp on the fence and sliding down to the ground. “...thank you,” she said. “That’s… I’m not sure I’ll ever stop finding it strange when you do things like that.”

“My uncle and I had… a disagreement,” Ben said as if she hadn’t spoken. “That’s the most control I’ve had over… it in weeks." 

_It_ was the strange power Ben possessed, a mystical force that flowed through his family line even as the legacy of the wizards who had possessed it had died in the realm at large generations ago.

The queen had it, and even after years in Alderaan Rey marveled to see her use it, little things like levitating a teacup or coaxing a starflower to bloom.

The queen’s brother had it, and although Rey had never had chance to meet him, he was renowned as the last wizard of the realm, able to manipulate the mystical forces with such skill and ability that he’d all but singlehandedly won the Great Rebellion that had shaped the realm years before Rey had been born.

And Prince Ben had it, the only child of and heir apparent to the Alderaanian throne, a too-tall and too-serious young man five years her senior who was often away at his uncle’s training temple, and who often returned with dark eyes forever growing sadder and more restless.

He was hard to reach, harder still to like, yet Rey often felt a swell of pity for him. Servants gossiped far too often not to overhear, and it was well-known throughout the years that no one quite knew what to do with him. Ben was extremely powerful, they said, near his uncle’s equal, but he had little control of it, angry and haunted by something that seemed far beyond normal sight.

The king had taken to the sea shortly before Rey had arrived, and although official word had declared it an extended merchant voyage, gossip had it that exasperation at his volatile, wayward son had played no small role.

“...you smell of the field.”

Rey couldn’t quite blame him sometimes. 

“And your mother wonders why you’re still unmarried at near twenty-five,” she said, gritting her teeth and giving his shoulder a hard shove. “Prat.”

Ben blinked at her as she started to walk away, and Rey sighed at the sound of his heavy footsteps following a half-heartbeat later. “Go away,” she said. “I’m going to have a bath. Since I _smell_.”

“I didn’t say you smell,” Ben said. “You smell of the field.”

He was quiet, abashed, walking a half-step behind her. “Grass and loam,” he murmured. “Green things. My uncle’s temple is set in a rocky crag by the sea. I’ve missed the earth. You remind me of it, always.”

Rey frowned and slowed, glancing back to Ben. He was watching her carefully, his dark eyes still piercing, appraising.

She never could quite get a read on him.

“...well fine, then,” she said after a moment. “I’ve still a good half-acre or so to clear. Hard work for soft princely hands, but since you’re here bothering me, you’d best help.”

She expected a flat refusal, a reminder of rank and station, open disdain for manual labor in thorn-choked fields.

Instead, Ben gave her a hint of a soft smile, and Rey blinked in confusion.

“As you wish,” he said with a shrug, and fell into step beside her.

There was a warm flutter somewhere in her chest, and Rey glanced down at it in annoyance. “...and you’ll need to send up to the house for lunch if you’re hungry, I’m not sharing mine.”

“Of course, Rey.”

She liked the way he said her name, in a way she never had.

She reached over and tugged at his cape, waiting as Ben took the hint and patiently removed it, handing it to her. He arched an eyebrow as Rey draped it over her head and shoulders.

“...I think I have a touch of sunstroke,” she explained, turning and continuing her walk to the fields as Ben stared after her.

“Strange thoughts in this heat,” she murmured to herself.

\--- 

Ben remained home at the Alderaanian royal estate for long weeks, as the first green notes of spring turned to the full blossom of early summer.

Every day, Rey took to work in the fields and forest.

Every day, Ben joined her without complaint.

“Oi!” she yelled, hoisting a load of kriin-wood in her arms and waiting until Ben swung down his axe onto the stump in front of him. “Once you’re finishing splitting those logs, I’ll need a hand up at the stables.”

Ben nodded, turning the axe over in his hands. “As you wish,” he said quietly. 

Another day, harvesting starblossom fruit, Ben walking behind her down the tidy lines of flowering plants and holding a large bushel in his arms. They were heavy, Rey knew from experience, especially laden with fruit, but Ben was quiet, simply uttering “as you wish” to each of her commands.

Week after week, fewer words spoken between them, a strangely easy camaraderie developing as they worked quietly together around the estate.

“Why do you keep saying that?” Rey finally asked him one evening as they sat at the foot of an oro-wood tree, her fingers tracing over the colorful lichen clinging to its trunk. “And why do you keep following me like a lost pup? Are you that eager to set your hands to work? That eager to avoid your mother?”

“I’ve seen my mother,” Ben said. He was lying on his back in the grass, hands clasped over his stomach, and did not look at her. “I doubt she’s been altogether pleased to see me.”

“Rubbish. Your mother loves you.”

“So you say.”

“So you _know_.” Rey lay down beside him, propping herself up on one elbow and resting her head in her hand. “It’s a shame all this time in the sun hasn’t done much to improve your disposition.”

“Hasn’t it?”

“You’re about as pleasant as a wet loth-cat at the moment.”

Ben frowned, staring into the distance. “I didn’t sleep well. I rarely do.”

“I’ve heard.” Rey chewed her lip between her teeth. “The woman who does your washing says she’s heard you scream in the night.”

“Is a man’s sleep such common knowledge?”

“What little you get of it, perhaps. What do you see that makes you scream so?”

Ben suddenly came to his feet, posture guarded, and even as Rey scrambled to join him he refused to meet her eyes. “Nothing I’d see fit to have you know of,” he said, and his voice was dark. “We’re done for today.”

“Ben!” she called to his retreating back. “Ben, I…”

“What?” he said sharply, half-turning to her. “What do you need?”

Rey stared at him, caught off-guard even as he stared at her expectantly.

There was little work left to be done, nothing that couldn’t be ably handled by other servants and paid hands.

...but it was lonely, retreating back to her quarters at the day’s end, and Ben was… not pleasant, surely, not really even a friend in the truest sense of things, but…

But he was here.

And she’d found herself liking that far more than she’d thought she might. 

Far more than she was used to.

Ben tilted his head slightly, and Rey could almost imagine that he’d heard her plaintive thoughts.

“I would like you to stay,” she said finally, the words naked, plain, and unpleasantly honest.

Ben stared at her and said nothing for the space of several long heartbeats.

Then:

“As you wish,” he whispered.

\---

_...can’t keep her safe…_

_...drag her to the darkness with blood on her hands…_

_...you’ll destroy her if you…_

_...you will_ **_come to me_ ** _…_

Rey woke with her heart in her throat, ice in her blood, eyes wide and searching frantically around her small room as her nightmare slowly faded.

She was breathing hard, and the sheets on her bed were sweat-damp and tangled around her legs. The pale, twisted face she had seen still lingered at the back of her mind, ice-blue eyes still shining in the darkness.

 Rey dropped her face into her hands, tangling her fingers in her hair. _Just a dream_ , she thought, breathing slowly and willing her heartbeat to settle. _Just a nightmare_.

She was no stranger to them — they haunted her most nights, vague shadowed images of her absent parents, her childhood self running desperately after them as they slipped further and further away.

This… this was something different.

Something dark.

Rey dressed quietly in the shadows, sliding on trousers and boots and slipping her well-worn robe over her shoulders. Sleep would not return for some time, she knew — her normal nightmares would usually lay her low for hours, and the dark, oily whispers she’d heard in her dreams tonight still echoed too loudly to allow her to close her eyes.

The night was clear and pleasantly cool as she left her quarters: a sturdy and well-appointed guest house adjacent to a wide field of gingerbells. When she’d first arrived on the doorstep of the House of Alderaan seven years ago, Queen Leia had offered to adopt her and bring her fully into the household, but Rey had declined.

“My parents will be looking for me,” she’d told the queen. “I just need to wait.” 

The queen had looked at her with soft, dark eyes, the same eyes Rey would come to see so often in her son. “You’ve been waiting a long time, Rey,” she’d said.

Rey, still young enough for hope and bright with determination, had smiled wanly.

“I’m good at waiting,” she’d said.

Seven years now.

She was still good at waiting.

But no one else seemed to be good at finding.

“Rey?”

She jumped at Ben’s soft, deep voice coming from the shadows, and she turned to see him standing a few yards off, watching her.

He was bared to the waist, and Rey clutched her robe more tightly around herself. “What are you doing awake at this hour?”

“What are you?”

Rey pressed her lips together. “Nightmare,” she admitted. “Not the usual ones, either.”

Ben frowned and walked towards her. “I wish mine weren’t.”

She averted her eyes as he drew near. “Do you have something you can put on? That’s…” She gestured to his bare chest, feeling her cheeks warm. “...distracting.”

Ben stared at her, unblinking, until Rey sighed in irritation and unwrapped her robe, throwing it at him. “Here.”

He caught it one-handed and looked from it to Rey, the bundle of fabric looking far too small even just in his hand.

Rey scrubbed a hand over her face as Ben stepped forward and draped the robe back over her shoulders. “I’m not cold anyway,” he said quietly.

“I’m not on the outside,” Rey said, closing her eyes as Ben’s hands lingered on her shoulders for a fraction of a second. “I… can we talk?”

There was a hint of fear across Ben’s impassive features, but it quickly faded. “As you wish,” he said softly.

He followed Rey to a nearby copse of hydenock trees, their bright-red trunks shining like blood in the moonlight, and sat down cross-legged across from her.

“It was very sudden,” Rey said quietly. “Most of my dreams are… continuous, I guess. They roll in like fog. This was more like a lightning strike — I was sleeping and then I was just… there. It felt like the dream had already started before I got there, somehow. Like I came in at the middle. I know that doesn’t make sense but...”

Ben was very still. “What did you see?”

He listened intently as Rey described the pale, twisted man, the dark whispers, the sense of foreboding and fear. “When I woke, it was as if…”

“...as if it still haunted you,” Ben finished, staring at her with wide eyes, breath quickening. “I know. I felt it.”

Rey furrowed her brow. “You felt it?”

“Rey…” Ben appeared to be steadying himself, and Rey shifted her position, leaning away from him, from the intensity and wonder that seemed to shine in his eyes. “That wasn’t your dream. It was mine.”

Rey froze, and for a moment the world seemed to narrow to Ben’s dark eyes on her, the soft rustle of the midsummer night breeze around them, the gentle chirp of cicadas in the distance.

“I think you have the same power I do,” he said softly.

Her breath caught in her throat, and her eyes widened. “I…” Rey started, shaking her head. "I can’t. I _couldn’t_. Isn’t it just in your family?”

“It’s strong in my family, yes. But we’re not the only ones. Just some of the last ones.” He glanced down at her hands where they lay trembling in her lap. “Give me your hand.”

“What for?”

“Just… trust me.” His eyes held a silent plea, and Rey gingerly extended her hand.

Ben’s fingertips had just barely brushed hers when she felt an electric jolt, then a settling calm, the world seeming to tilt and expand…

...and then she felt it, a brush against her own mind, and she could see _herself_ through Ben’s eyes, feel his feelings, and…

She drew her hand back with a gasp.

“No… I don’t want this,” she choked out, scrambling to her feet on shaky legs. “I can’t…”

She dropped her head into her hands as Ben’s thoughts retreated, as her own began to race in response.

She could feel the way his power pulsed and raged beneath his skin, dark and insistent, the way his mind felt stretched to breaking as he held it in check and something screamed deep inside him.

Felt the way his thoughts brushed against hers, the way her heartbeat seemed louder, brighter, and she could almost feel it bursting with light.

Felt his feelings down to the marrow, the memory of her in sunlight held close and cherished during cold sea nights, the sight of her a soothing balm against the pain of dark nightmares, her name a precious thing spoken in whispers in unguarded moments.

“That’s not why I did this,” Ben said quietly. The hand she’d touched rested palm-up on his knee. “I didn’t… you weren’t supposed to see that.”

Rey swallowed hard, leaning back against the hydenock tree. “I don’t even know what to think anymore,” she said after a moment, near tears and not entirely sure why. “What have you done to me?”

“I haven’t done anything. The Force is innate. You were born with it. I’d wondered for awhile — I don’t know why it’s awoken in you now.”

“No, with…” She gestured vaguely. “With _everything_. You’re gone for months, then you come home more troubled than ever, you’re following me and doing everything I tell you to, and now I have whatever is making you miserable?”

Ben was silent, watching her from his position on the ground. 

“...and then you tell me I’m _magic_ or whatever it is and touch my hand and I see everything inside of you and I just…” She wilted, shoulders slumping, and looked at him helplessly. “I don’t understand you, Ben. Please just tell me what’s going on.”

“...as you wish.”

Something in Rey broke, and she dropped to her knees and pushed Ben back into the grass with a strangled scream, holding him by his shoulders. “And stop saying that! Weeks now and you’ll barely speak to me but you’ll defer to whatever I tell you? Work yourself raw just because I tell you to? By whose decree? You’re a prince and I’m _nothing_!”

She started as Ben raised one shaky hand to brush away a tear sliding down her cheek.

“Not to me,” he said, voice raw, and tears shone in his eyes.

He pressed his fingertips to her cheek and kept his gaze firmly on hers as she felt the depth of his feelings again, saw him through his mind’s eye as he followed her in the fields, in the forests, the fullness of his heart, the open yearning, the truth behind his repeated words.

“As you wish.”

_I love you_.

Rey gasped as she jolted back, staring down at Ben in disbelief.

“...when?” she asked, and it sounded foolish and breathless even to her own ears. “How?”

“Awhile,” Ben said simply, cupping her cheek in his hand. “And easily.”

He could doubtless feel the waves of confusion and disbelief radiating from her, and he moved to pull his hand away.

Ben’s brows arched in surprise as Rey pressed her hand to his, holding it to her face, feeling something warm and bright burning through her chest.

His feelings still thrummed beneath his skin, open and warm, but she felt something else, something hidden deep and unspoken within herself.

The way she always sought him out when he was home, the same way he did her.

How comfortable she felt by his side, even as she complained, teased him.

The indignation and defensiveness when the servants spoke ill of him.

The way she worried over him, yearned to protect him.

... _oh_.

She had seen it in his mind, how he’d known for weeks, if not months, if not _years_ , a slow, burgeoning affection that had grown into something bone-deep.

She felt it all at once, a realization sharp and overwhelming like being dipped full-body into cold water.

Except this was warm, enveloping, something tingling pleasantly all throughout her, down to her fingertips and toes.

“...Ben Solo,” Rey said, and she could hear her voice shaking, “I need you to kiss me this instant before I lose my nerve.”

Ben was stock-still beneath her, and Rey’s heart sank, embarrassment rising up hot and awful in her chest.

And then Ben was rising up, resting his forehead against hers. “As you wish,” he said softly, and pressed his lips to hers.

It was an awkward thing, a first kiss by any measure, uncomfortably positioned and neither were quite sure what to do with their lips.

But it was pure and beautiful in a way few kisses ever are, or can be, and the world itself seemed to sigh in contentment.

It had been a tumultuous night, with the specter of nightmares still unspoken and the power of a frightening force somehow surrounding her, but as Rey held Ben close to her, as he pressed her back into the grass and kissed her with slow, soft lips, everything else faded away into the quiet hum of a starry summer night.

\---

In short order it became the kind of giddy, starry-eyed summer bards craft lyrics for, the kind that poets dream of.

Missives from Ben’s uncle came, and his mother watched him with worried eyes as Ben delayed his return to the temple week after week.

He spent his days at Rey’s side, kissing her senseless in the sun-dappled shade of spiced chinar trees, scowling as she threaded starflowers into his hair, cradling her close at night and counting the stars winking overhead.

“They’re different in Ahch-To,” he said one night, as Rey lay in his arms and he showed her Alderaanian constellations. “Where my uncle’s temple is.”

“The stars are different?”

“Yes.”

Rey frowned and curled closer. “Is it so far away?”

“Quite. It’s many days’ journey. The landscape would be foreign to you, I think. Mostly water and rock.”

“Do you think I might be able to go? I’d…” Rey hesitated. “I’d like to understand the Force as well. Whatever this is, I think… I think it’s always been inside me, somehow. I’m not sure what to do with it.”

Ben kissed her temple, and Rey still felt a giddy thrill at it, the euphoria of new love and gentle touches by starlight. “I’d like to talk to my uncle first,” he murmured. “He’s… I think he’s losing faith in me. I’m afraid of how he might handle you.”

Rey frowned up at him. “Is he unkind to you?”

“Not unkind.” Ben leaned back, holding his hand up and tracing the shapes of the stars. “Frightened, I think,” he said quietly.

Rey furrowed her brow in concern, shifting up so her head rested against his bicep. “I’m not frightened of you, Ben Solo,” she said firmly. “Not one bit.”

“Well, obviously. I’m the one who’s scared of you.”

“Ben!”

There was a glint of mischief in his eyes that was a joy to see, and Rey let him hoist her up on top of him, his lips just skimming her jawline.

Rey tipped her head back to the stars to allow him to kiss her throat, and a single bright star seemed struck against the dark sky, vivid and white.

“Is that one the same, I wonder?” she asked aloud. “It seems rather hard to miss.”

“Mm,” Ben said. “That’s the evening star. I think I’ve seen it on Ahch-To. There’s usually not too much time for stargazing with the meditation and training.”

She sat back against his thighs, tracing his brow with one hand. “If it’s there,” she began slowly, and her cheeks flushed at her own sentimentality, “and if you should see it while you’re away, think of me.”

“You assume that I’ll stop thinking of you at any point.”

“ _Ben_.”

He smiled, full and open, and Rey felt her heart nearly burst from happiness at the sight of it.

“As you wish,” he said simply.

\--- 

The days grew shorter, and the smooth heat of summer gave way to the cool darkening of early autumn.

Ben’s uncle’s missives became too numerous to ignore, as did his mother’s firm insistence that he return to the shores of Ahch-To.

And so Rey found herself wrapped up in Ben’s cape, in his arms, clinging to him as a coachman arrived to bear him away.

“It’s all right,” he murmured. “Rey.”

“I’ve had terrible nightmares,” she murmured against his shirt front. “Something awful is going to happen, I feel it in…” She took a deep breath. “I’m afraid, Ben. I’m worried I’ll never see you again.”

“It’ll be all right,” Ben hushed, stroking her hair. “And of course you’ll see me again.”

“But what if something happens to you?”

Ben shifted them apart just enough to gently cup her chin in his hand. “Rey,” he said softly, “hear me now: I will come for you. I will _always_ come for you.”

Rey shook her head, closing her eyes and leaning into his touch even as ice-cold dread gripped her stomach. “But how can you be sure?”

Ben glanced behind her, and at the corner of her eye Rey saw Queen Leia approaching, her robes immaculate and hair intricately braided.

Ben seemed unmoved by her presence and held Rey tightly, lips brushing against her ear. “Because this is true love,” he whispered. “Do you think this sort of thing happens every day?”

Rey gave him a watery smile as Ben lifted her clear off her feet, and she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him fiercely.

“Rey. Benjamin.”

It was to his credit that Ben didn’t drop her, though he set her back down none-too-gently, looking at his mother in clear abashment. “Your Majesty,” he bowed deeply at the waist.

Leia rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake, Ben.”

“Just showing my respects, mother.”

“Mm-hm. Show our girl the respect to wait to put those big hands of yours all over her until you’re intended,” Leia said frankly.

Ben paled slightly. “...you know about…”

“I’m your mother. I know everything.” She patted Rey on the arm. “We’ll take you to the apothecary to be safe, dear. No need to further the line just yet.”

“ _Mother._ ”

“And _you_ talk to your uncle about your training. His kind aren’t supposed to have lovers, you know. You may have to make adjustments.”

“But we haven’t even…”

Ben’s voice trailed off as his mother took his hand, her wedding band glinting in the early morning light. “Your father will be proud of you,” she said softly.

Something dark and malevolent flashed through his eyes, and Rey took a step back at the sight of it.

“Now say your goodbyes and get going,” she said, patting Rey on the cheek. “I’ve been buying you as much time as I could with your uncle — can you believe he bought the ‘oh the letter must have gotten lost’ excuse three times in a row? — but it’s time for you to get back.”

Rey smiled faintly as Leia walked away, far more quickly than such a tiny woman of her age should have conceivably been able to.

“...your royal highness,” the coach’s footman hazarded from the road. “I’m afraid we do need to get you to your ship." 

Ben nodded, exhaling slowly before gathering Rey up in his arms one last time.

“Wait for me, sweetheart,” he said quietly, hugging her close. “I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

Rey said nothing, merely held him as tightly as she could, dreading the moment she would have to let go.

\---

The season turned.

An early snow blanketed the fields at barely mid-autumn, and Rey found herself strong-armed into taking tea with the queen.

“Have you heard anything of Ben?” Rey asked, watching the surface of her tea ripple as a maid gently dropped a sugarcube into the cup.

“No,” Leia said, sipping her own tea, “but I doubt we will until he returns.” 

She smiled at Rey and patted her hand reassuringly. “Be patient, ” she said.

Rey managed a weak smile and thanked the maid as she was handed a small pastry.

Outside, the snow continued to fall.

\---

The last leaves fell, and still Ben had not returned.

He’d left his cape behind for her, and Rey wrapped herself up in it at night.

It didn’t stop the nightmares.

But it helped. 

\---

It was on the winter solstice when she felt it, a horrible scream through the Force, something rending and breaking and awful, and Rey nearly fell out of bed from the shock of it.

The Force had lain dormant ever since Ben left, and she ran barefoot through the snow to the house, wild-eyed, hair unbound.

She found Leia in the queen’s chambers, a rough-edged note in her hands, her hair tightly braided in the Alderaanian mourning style.

“...Your Majesty,” Rey managed, dropping into a curtsey.

She glanced up at Leia from her place on the floor, heart shattering at the queen’s damp, reddened eyes, the tight line of her mouth.

“There was an attack on Ahch-To,” she said.

Rey’s heart sank, and she stumbled in a daze to one of the nearby chairs.

“A group of assassins attacked in the night. Burned the temple to the ground, slaughtered and burned the inhabitants.” Leia’s voice was detached, distant, and Rey’s vision faded as she willed the queen not to continue, not to tell her what she already knew.

“My son is dead.”

Everything went white.

\---

For four days and four nights, Rey lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes.

Ahch-To was too remote, too isolated to retrieve the fallen prince’s ashes, and so his memorial ceremony was as empty as it was solemn, a half-day’s remembrance for the last heir to Alderaan.

Leia had dressed Rey in mourning white and braided her hair. She had allowed the lost girl from Jakku to stand beside her and receive dignitaries and mourners.

Rey stood silent and numb as trusted allies whispered words that meant nothing to her, how Coruscant’s corruption had deepened, how word was that they’d been responsible for the attack on Ahch-To.

“They say Prince Ben fought valiantly,” the queen of Naboo told them over tea, her voice soft and soothing, deferring to Alderaan’s grief. “But the Dread Knight Ren was too formidable a match. The wild dog of Coruscant, they say — he spares no one.”

Leia and the queen continued to speak softly, politics and war and favors.

Rey heard only the name of the man who had killed her beloved, over and over, until her vision faded and her mind fell mercifully silent.

\---

Two weeks later, she wrapped herself in Ben’s cape and shuffled through the deepening snow to the dormant gingerbell field, lying back against the fresh powder and staring up at the stars.

She reached one hand up, silhouetted against the winter-dark sky, and traced the lines and shapes Ben had shown her, her fingertips lingering over the evening star.

“ _I’ll come back for you_.”

Liar.

“ _I promise.”_

**_Liar_.** Rey’s tears were hot against her skin in the cold winter air, and she didn’t bother to chase them away.

Her parents had left her.

Ben had left her.

“I’ll never love again,” Rey said quietly, and only the night was there to hear it.

When she returned to her quarters, she left Ben’s cape behind.


	2. No One to Hear You Scream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the overwhelming response to the first chapter! This fic is kind of an experiment, but I'm glad so many people have found it satisfying thus far.
> 
> Please note that this chapter is by far the sharpest departure from The Princess Bride we'll have in the story, mostly because adapting the core story to something the complies with Reylo required a bit more setup and worldbuilding than I could accomplish in one chapter. I hope it's an enjoyable read and that the ending gives you an idea of how we're finally diving deep into TPB territory; thank you for your patience!
> 
> (Also please note that this chapter does include a tiny, tiny bit of one-sided Damerey. I'm primarily a monoshipper myself, so I feel confident in saying it shouldn't be too upsetting. Still, please keep it in mind.) 
> 
> Please enjoy!

**Chapter Two: “No One to Hear You Scream”**

\---

**THREE YEARS LATER**

\---

“Rey, did Leia tell you where she wanted this shipment?”

Rey glanced up from tending the starblossom beds ringing the royal manor’s expansive front gardens. “I’ve no idea, Poe,” she said, frowning toward the house. “Best ask her yourself. What is it this time?”

“Well…” Poe grinned at her as he leaned against the bevy of crates behind him. He was a handsome one, all pearly-white teeth and a slow roll of charisma, and she knew the maids were doubtless crowded around the windows watching him. “It's probably better if you don’t know.”

“Mm,” Rey said noncommittally, snipping a weed away from the stem of a pure-white blossom.

Poe knelt down in front of her, plucking the flower and tucking it behind her ear. “Unless you’ve decided to join us?” he asked quietly, and his eyes were gentle.

Rey pursed her lips and stood, untangling the flower from her hair and handing it back to him a fraction more roughly than she’d meant to. “You’ve been asking me for the last two years and my answer is the same. Alderaan is neutral in the war, Poe,” she said meaningfully. “And so am I.”

“We don’t have the luxury of neutrality anymore,” Poe insisted, rising up and taking her hand to help her to her feet. “You know what Coruscant is doing.”

There was an earnest fire in his eyes, always, and his silver tongue could move armies to war.

No wonder Leia had grown so fond of him.

“I know that what you’re doing is dangerous,” Rey whispered. “And if anyone asks, I _don’t_ know what’s in those crates, or who you are, or what you’re doing here.”

“You wound me, Rey.”

“You can bear it.”

“Are you really so unmoved by the plight of your countrymen?” Poe insisted, blocking her path back to the house and staring down at her with those deep, determined eyes.

“I have no countrymen,” Rey fired back. “Jakku is too poor to have a stake in politics. Caring for anything beyond your next meal is a luxury in the desert.”

“You’re not from Jakku anymore. Leia took you in, didn’t she?” Poe asked, and his voice softened. “You’re Alderaanian.”

“I’m nothing,” Rey said.

She slapped her gardening shears against his chest and stalked back towards the house.

_Not to me_ , she heard, a lost, distant whisper rising up from somewhere in her memory like the faint notes of a forgotten lullaby.

Rey grit her teeth and kicked hard at a tangle of dandelions.

Three years.

What would it take, how long would it take her to forget?

\--- 

It snowed the day Ben died.

Most days thereafter as well, for the whole of winter, gray-white storms screaming down from the mountains and frosting the world a blinding white.

The fields were blanketed by thick powder and crunching ice, and work round the estate slowed to a crawl. Time to grieve, then, for the lost prince, the end to the royal line.

But Rey had never had the luxury of idle grief. When her parents had left her at the age of five, she’d quickly learned her heartbroken sobs were easier to bear with food in her mouth and her small limbs aching from a day’s work in the scrapyard.

And so when Ben died and the heart she’d spent years carefully mending once more broke apart, she’d done the only thing she knew to do.

She worked.

It was in the deep of winter that a pair of grooms found her in the field, half-frostbitten and numb with cold, her lips and fingers blue as she tried to repair a broken fence post.

They’d taken her to the house, where Leia draped her in a thick coverlet and sent for tea, rubbing Rey’s frozen hands between her own warm, soft ones.

“As soon as I’m thawed I’m going back out there,” Rey had said between gritted teeth, clutching the heavy fabric around her shoulders. “The stablemaster will have my head if that fence is still split and the horses break free of the pasture.”

“Rey, there is a foot of snow on the ground. The horses aren’t going that far out of the paddock,” Leia said, murmuring thanks to the maid that rolled a tea cart beside them. “Besides which, no one will have your head on my watch. How many times do we have to tell you that you don’t have to work so hard? Or at all, really, if you’re not inclined to?”

It was an admonition, but a gentle one, and Rey found herself fighting back tears at the gentle warmth and kindness in Leia’s eyes.

Eyes like dark whiskey, looking at her like…

“I have to go,” Rey said abruptly, rising to her feet and tossing back the coverlet. “There’s the fence to be done, and our store of firewood is getting low enough that I’d best see what’s taking the forester so long, I’ll head out to the woods myself if I have to…”

“Rey,” Leia said, sighing.

Rey stopped and looked at her helplessly, a sob rising up in her chest.

“Working yourself to death won’t bring him back.”

Leia’s eyes were wet, her arms warm as Rey crumpled into them, finally allowing herself to weep in earnest.

\---

The days grew longer, winter turning to warming spring, and the sharp, searing pain settled into something like an ever-present dull ache.

It was easier, too, to ignore her inner turmoil when the outside world became uneasier and less stable by the day.

Coruscant, the sprawling, wealthy kingdom against which the Great Rebellion had been fought, had rebuilt and seemed feverish in its pursuit of lost land and vengeance on those who had defied it in the past. Ahch-To, it seemed, had just been the beginning, and ill news came steadily of another village destroyed, another kingdom subjugated.

It was the sacking of Yavin, a small, subtropical enclave to the south, that had brought Poe Dameron to their door, a renowned knight of the loosely-allied Republic that seemed to be splintering apart day by day.

Rey had been introduced to him the first summer after Ben, and he’d kissed her knuckles and given her a genuine smile that made her heart flutter.

She hated him for it, and avoided the house when she knew him to be there.

Poe, for all his charm, was also astute, and he finally cornered Rey by the stables one warm afternoon.

“I’ve been trying to figure out if you hold disdain for Leia, myself, or just houses in general,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her.

Rey had scowled and ducked past him.

Poe had followed, and his footsteps were just a touch too light, a touch too quick to be those she yearned for, and she quickened her pace.

“So what’s your story? Are you Leia’s adopted daughter?”

“I’m no one,” she said. “But I am a girl who’s going to make sure the chickens have been fed, and you are a man who is going to stop bothering me.”

“I’ve heard she thinks of you as such,” Poe continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but even with the attitude you’re a good sight better than that son of hers.”

Rey stopped, slowly turning back to face him. “...say that again.”

Poe stared at her curiously, shrugging. “It wasn’t exactly a secret in the Republic that when it came to dutiful sons, Prince Ben…”

“Don’t you _dare_ say his name like that. By the gods above I swear I’ll lay you out where you stand.”

Poe had gone quiet, carefully inspecting her face, eyes glancing down at the hands she curled and uncurled into fists. “You were sweet on him, weren’t you.” He’d smiled to himself, and there was something bittersweet to it. “His widow?”

Rey’s anger had deflated a bit as Poe’s pointed teasing settled into what appeared to be genuine sympathy. “No. We never married.”

It had hurt to say aloud, somehow.

Poe nodded. “Would you have, do you think?”

Rey was quiet, recalling that last conversation with Leia, about how Ben’s kind weren’t permitted lovers.

But maybe…

Would he have left that life behind for her? For them?

“I’m sorry,” Poe said quietly.

Rey glanced at him, and his eyes were soft with contrition.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Rey said, and there was a steadiness to her voice that she didn’t feel. “He’s gone. Do you know what happened to him?”

“I’ve heard. Coruscant.” He spit the word with such venom that Rey took a step back. “If I were you I’d be aching for their blood. They slaughtered their way through Yavin, too, enslaved half the villagers, killed the others. It’s a small kindness my parents didn’t live to see it. They’ve either taken or burned half a dozen kingdoms and principalities since midwinter. They’re getting stronger.”

Poe had grown quiet then, features darkening. He looked at Rey, eyes narrowed curiously. “How much do you know about Leia? About what she’s doing?”

Rey’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Leia? What about her?”

Poe smiled and shook his head in response. “Nothing, then. I don’t think you’d have the guile to fake it if you did. No worry. I’ll leave it to her to tell you, and to you to decide where you’ll stand.”

“Tell me what?” Rey asked, catching Poe’s arm as he moved to walk past her. “Is Leia in danger?” she asked in an urgent whisper.

Poe watched her carefully before shaking his head.

“Anyone who tries to stop her might be,” he’d said darkly. “There’s a war coming, Rey. Those of us who resist will be ready.”

The afternoon was unseasonably warm, but Rey had felt a cold chill down her spine just the same.

\---

“Those weak-kneed loyalists of the Republic are asking us to keep the peace and swear fealty to Coruscant,” Leia said by way of greeting as Rey entered her chambers. “Do you think they’d get the message if I asked them to swear fealty to my left garter belt?”

Rey pressed her thumbs to her eyes. “Your Majesty.”

She heard a long-suffering sigh. “One of these days I’ll get you to call me ‘Leia’. As much as I would have liked grandchildren, between you and Ben I don’t think they’d have ever learned my name.”

Rey buried the sharp pang she felt at the sound of his. “Poe’s outside with another shipment,” she said, changing the subject. “Should I tell him to take it to the armory or does he already know?”

“That nerf-herding…” Leia swore under her breath. “I’ve told him not to involve you in all of this. Alderaan is still neutral on paper, and you’re our best asset to maintain that façade.”

“He didn’t tell me anything, not really. I was just tending the flowerbeds when he came round. As far as I know he’s still milling about in the gardens.”

“Ah.” Leia watched Rey carefully, casting an appraising eye over her face. “And did he ask you anything else?”

“Just if I’d finally agreed to join the resistance.” She raised a curious eyebrow at Leia. “Why? Was there something else he was supposed to ask?”

Leia sighed and shook her head on a soft smile. “Nothing. I’ll have to talk to him. Seems he’s lost his nerve.”

“...Your Maj…” Rey winced at the flat stare Leia leveled her with. “...Leia?”

“Nothing. I’m not keen to meddle in young people’s love lives. What the two of you ultimately do is none of my business.”

Rey’s eyes widened, and she moved to close the heavy chamber doors behind her. “‘Love lives’?” she repeated incredulously, pressing her back to the doors. “Whose love lives?”

“Leia?”

Rey bit back an oath as the doors rattled against her back. “Do you want to talk to him? Should I leave?”

Leia motioned her aside with one lazy, regal wave, and Rey flushed uncomfortably as Poe strode in. He gave no indication that he’d seen her as she quickly ducked behind one heavy muskwood door.

“Leia,” Poe said warmly, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “How’s my best girl?”

Leia glanced behind him to Rey’s hidden position by the door. “Fine,” she said mildly. “Did you deliver everything to Kaydel?”

“I did. Checked the storehouse, too — we’ve got enough arrows to make pincushions out of the entire Coruscant Army at this point.”

“Good. Won’t hurt us to be prepared. Now what’s the hold-up with Rey?”

Rey’s eyes widened, and she peered out from behind the door.

Poe laughed uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck. “Leia, I told you I was just thinking about it…”

“Do you think it hasn’t been enough time?”

“No, I’m not…” He sighed. “She still talks about him.”

“If you’re waiting for her to forget him, you’ll be dust before you make your move.”

“...fair enough.”

Rey’s heart was racing, her back pressed as firmly to the small space behind the door as she could.

He couldn’t possibly mean to…

“Two years since I’ve known her and she still seems so lonely,” Poe murmured. “I’m not trying to… it just feels like the right thing to do. She’s a good kid — I don’t want to keep seeing her waste away here pining for a ghost. And I’d take care of her, Leia. You know I would. So if you have any misgivings about my asking for her  hand…”

Rey gasped, and Poe and Leia looked curiously at the space where she was hidden.

“I think it’s time you and the door had an honest conversation,” Leia said, retrieving her cane and rising to her feet. She patted Poe on the cheek, glancing at the door. “And you, Rey, don’t be afraid to kick him if he gets fresh.”

Poe went stock-still as Leia pulled the door closed behind her, revealing Rey with her palms flat against the wall, staring at him with wide eyes.

“...so,” he said after a moment, “you’ve found your calling as a wall decoration. Bold choice, but that’s one way to get out of joining the resistance.”

“Asking for my hand?” Rey repeated, and her voice sounded frightened and breathless even to her own ears.

Poe grinned at her in embarrassment, spreading his hands out by his sides. “I…” He laughed self-consciously. “I was hoping to do this with a little more panache, but now that you know…”

_...no._

Rey trembled as he retrieved a gold ring from a cord around his neck, as he dropped to one knee.

“I know I haven’t always been your favorite person,” he began, “and you’ve spent your whole life afraid of being hurt by anyone who gets close.”

There was an odd buzzing at the back of her mind, something strangely familiar but unplaceable. She brushed it aside and forced herself to stay grounded, to listen.  

“And I know that you’re still hurting, after what happened with… him.”

Rey’s heart clenched in her chest, and Ben’s face flashed through her mind.

She closed her eyes.

“But I think that… if you’ll have me… Rey, would you…”

“No.”

Poe froze as he moved to hand her the ring, staring up at her and blinking. “I… no?”

“No,” Rey said, swallowing hard against the sudden lump in her throat. “Poe…”

“...that rhymed,” he said dimly.

She managed a faint smile and knelt down in front of him so they were eye-to-eye. “Poe,” she said softly, “you don’t love me.”

Poe hesitated, closing the ring within his palm. “...I could,” he said finally. “I do care for you. You have a good heart, and you’re definitely a sight for sore eyes.”

Rey smiled wistfully, folding her hand over his. “Keep this for someone who has a good heart for you,” she said meaningfully. “Not just someone you’re just trying to save.”

Poe furrowed his brow. “Trying to save?”

He didn’t see it, she knew, and she drew him into a brief hug, even as she felt the confusion in his embrace.

Maybe he did love her, in some strange way.

But he’d never care for her the way he did his fight.

And she…

“...I don’t love you,” Rey said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

She heard Poe’s sharp intake of breath, then felt his short nod. “I figured as much. I just thought… maybe it would help you move on, if you didn’t have to be alone anymore.”

“I’m not alone.” Rey allowed him to kiss her cheek before they stood together. “I have Leia, and I have you.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “And I could have the resistance,” she said, exhaling. “If you still want me for it.”

Poe’s eyes brightened, and he clutched Rey’s shoulders. “...is that a yes?”

Rey hesitated before nodding firmly. “Yes.”

Poe let out a loud whoop and hoisted Rey up in his arms, and Rey shook her head and laughed as he swung her around.

“You’re finally joining the good fight, Rey,” he said, and there was a giddy joy on his face that made her heart feel lighter.

Still, she thought, smile fading as Poe set her to her feet, as he spoke enthusiastically about how they could use her as a possible spy, as an emissary, even as soldier if she’d like to…

She envied him how quickly his heart healed.

Hers somehow hurt more than ever.

\---

Sleep did not come easily that night, and Rey tossed and turned for long hours as the moon grew high and full.

She finally drifted away into a dark, shifting space, and she blinked into the darkness as the shadows parted.

Her heart caught in her throat as she saw Ben.

It had been several nights since she’d dreamed of him, and he was paler than she remembered, his hair longer.

But the greatest change was his eyes. The Ben of her dreams, the Ben she’d loved had always regarded her with soft affection and devotion, the things she’d so deeply cherished and lost.

This Ben had dark circles beneath his eyes, something pained in their depths, open shock flaring through them as he saw her.

“...Rey,” he breathed, staggering to his feet, and he took an unsteady step towards her.

His hands were gloved, and he half-extended a hand towards her before pulling it back, glancing sharply over his shoulder.

“...Ben?” she whispered, and even in her dream she longed to comfort him, ease the fear from his eyes.

He turned back to her abruptly, face twisted in pain, and Rey gasped as she was bodily flung back, landing hard on her backside.

“ _Run_ ,” she heard in a desperate, frenzied whisper.

\---

Rey woke with a start, Ben’s name frozen against her tongue, choking in her throat, and her cheeks were damp.

She breathed slowly, pressing her fingertips to her temples and willing the throbbing pulse in her head to settle. It was agonizing, as though her consciousness itself were being ripped apart, even in waking, and the memory of the pain on Ben’s face lingered in the darkness.

She was no stranger to nightmares, but this had seemed so much more visceral, more vivid, and she could almost feel the Force flaring to life and surrounding her as Ben had reached for her.

“When are you going to stop haunting me?” Rey murmured aloud.

Sleep continued to elude her, even as she lit a candle to chase the shadows away, even as she bundled herself up in the thick coverlet on her bed in the too-warm summer evening.

She hadn’t heard Ben’s voice so vividly in her dreams in ages, and once she would have luxuriated in it, this tether still holding him to her, even if only in dreams.

But he’d look so frightened, his features nearly gaunt, and the urgency in his voice…

Her eyes widened as the Force flared to life, and it was agonizing, like being speared through the chest with a white-hot poker.

Rey stumbled to her feet and made it to the door to her quarters, flinging it open and staggering into the gingerbell field. They were in full bloom, fragrant and plentiful, and Rey reached down with shaking fingers to pluck one from the soil. She clutched it in one hand as her eyes skimmed over the field, the towering trees fringing its edges, and everything seemed so _alive_. She could hear the heartbeat of a nightingale, the high rolling chirps of cicadas, the whisper of chinar trees in the wind.

It was overwhelming, and she breathed slowly, attempting to bring the seemingly endless ripples of the Force into a cohesive feeling.

_Ben,_ she thought, and her chest heaved with a dry sob. _I don’t understand this. I need your help._  

_I need **you**. _  

Rey raised her trembling hand to the sky and held the evening star against her fingertips, her shoulders shaking.

She wondered if this was how the Force felt to Leia.

How she could stand it.

\---

Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary when Leia had returned to her quarters as Poe took his leave, but not before proudly declaring Rey to be the newest member of the resistance.

Leia had frowned at her a fraction, quietly asking Poe to excuse them.

“He seems in good spirits,” she’d said. “So, did he…”

“I didn’t give him the chance,” Rey said quietly. “And I said no.”

Leia stared at her, then nodded, easing herself down onto a nearby chaise longue. “You don’t owe him your joining the fight just because you can’t marry him, you know.”

“It’s not that I can’t, I…”

“Rey.” Leia gave her a soft smile. “Have I told you about Han?”

She had patted the seat beside her, and Rey moved to sit. “Most stubborn man in existence,” Leia had observed fondly. “Reckless as they come, not a sensible bone in his body. My father gave his life for the Rebellion before Han came around, otherwise I’m sure he’d have had a few choice words about his daughter marrying a pirate.”

Rey managed a faint smile. “But did you love him?”

Leia’s own smile had been soft, sad. “I’ve never stopped, Rey,” she’d said gently. “I’ve had suitors over the years. Good men, handsome men, respected men.” There was a glint of mischief in her eyes. “I’ve always been a looker, you know.”

“Well of course.”

Leia had flashed her a knowing smirk, but it quickly faded. “But even though it’s been years since he’s been home…” She’d stared behind Rey to the windows, to something far away and sight unseen. “That impossible man still has my heart. That’s just the way it is, whether I might wish it otherwise. He still writes sometimes, from whatever far-flung island he’s found himself in trouble on at any given moment. Sometimes he doesn’t even ask for money or about my underthings.”

“ _Leia_.” Rey’s eyes had widened, and she’d flushed down to her toes.

“Ah, is that what it takes to get you to call me that?” Leia had laughed, gently taking Rey’s hand.

Rey squeezed Leia’s hand back, frowning as the buzzing and pounding at the back of her head grew louder.

“Your parents will be able to find you no matter which side of the war you’re on,” Leia had said quietly. “But if it helps you sleep better at night, there’s nothing wrong with your staying out of things. And it helps Alderaan’s image as a kingdom of neutrality if I can point to a member of my house as openly and fiercely neutral. Regardless of what the truth might be.”

Rey bit her lip, closing her eyes against her growing headache. “...and if I’m ready to take a side?” she asked quietly. “If I’m ready to take up arms against the men who took Ben from us?”

Leia had gripped Rey’s hand more tightly, and her eyes flashed with understanding and determination all at once.

“Then I think you could make the world burn,” she’d said.

\---

Rey skimmed one shaky hand across the back of her head and grimaced.

That’s right, her head had ached terribly from the moment Poe had begun his awkward proposal, all through her brief tete a tete with Leia.

But Leia had seemed fine, and Poe had the Force signature of a stone.

_How does this work?_ Rey thought in frustration, tugging sharply at the ends of her hair. _How does any of this work?_

The world seemed to be spinning faster, the noises of the night growing louder, and Rey clasped her hands to her ears.

_...would you…_

_...I’ve never stopped…_

_….make the world burn…_

_...Rey…_

_..._ **_run_** _._

Everything went still.

A dark cloud rolled across the moon, and even the cicadas fell silent.

Rey’s eyes widened as smoke began to rise from the horizon, as the earth began to shake.

The first dark-armored riders bearing the flag of Coruscant appeared at the edge of the fields just as the trees around her burst into flame.

\---

The Force was screaming.

Rey coughed as she ran as fast as her legs could carry her to the slope-edged barn that served as Alderaan’s armory.

It was empty, the few resistance soldiers on the estate likely up at the house and unaware of fire and death charging toward them.

Rey glanced around at the rows of secretly-trafficked weapons — she’d a bit of experience with a sword, but only what little Ben had taught her during that last halcyon summer.

But ah, _that_. Her old staff, the one she’d brought with her from Jakku, dusty and unused for long years and stored with little thought in a corner.

A bit like her, Rey thought as she slung it across her chest, and her heart sank at how easily she once more became the scavenger girl from the sinking fields.

There was a faint glow at the corner of her eye, and she saw an unassuming sword shielded in a thick leather scabbard lying beside a heavy chest.

The Force hummed at the back of her mind as she reached down and hoisted it, turning it over in her palms.

There was a loud scream from outside, and Rey barely had time to fasten the sword to her belt before the doors to the armory burst open.

Six knights in dark armor stood before her, their faces masked, and Rey froze.

Time seemed to stand still, and it was as though she could see the flow of the Force between her heartbeats.

The fields were on fire outside, and a heavy, flaming branch from a chinar tree fell onto the gingerblossoms in a shower of sparks.

Mounted cavalry and heavy infantry were razing their way through Alderaan, and she could hear agonized screams.

There was a sudden sharpness in her chest, something ferocious and agonizing, and she could taste anger, fear, wild-eyed desperation…

One of the knights charged for her, and Rey’s breath caught in her throat as she moved to unsheath her sword.

She stumbled back in shock as a sword suddenly protruded through the knight’s chest, and she was close enough to see her stunned expression reflected in the blade.

Rey had scarcely blinked before the remaining knights and turned and fled back to their army, their fallen comrade bleeding unheeded at her feet. She exhaled shakily, clutching the scabbard at her hip, only to freeze as she realized that one knight had remained.

He was far taller and broader than the others, and the sword in his hand glinted red with blood.

Rey stumbled backwards as she took in the towering presence’s dark helm, the blackened armor, the cowl that draped his shoulders.

The Dread Knight Ren.

Even through the helm, she knew he was watching her, and his chest heaved beneath his armor.

His Force signature emanated more pain than anything she had ever felt, somehow even worse than…

She blinked, and he was gone.

Rey’s legs were shaking, and she could scarcely breathe.

Her anger bubbled up slowly behind her breastbone, her breaths coming shorter and quicker, and she roughly tore the sword from its scabbard and ran into the fire, heart pounding, thoughts racing.

She needed to get to the house to warn Leia.

She needed to protect the people of Alderaan.

She needed…

The flames grew higher around her as she ran headlong through the field, and she saw the Dread Knight of Ren silhouetted far in the distance, sword clenched tightly in his hand as he faced away from her.

Rey’s steps faltered as she viewed the sight in front of her, and she nearly retched in horror.

The House of Alderaan was in flames.

Her legs gave out beneath her.

The last thing Rey saw before darkness overtook her was the man she swore with her last conscious moment to see dead by her own hand.

\---

**ONE MONTH LATER**

\---

“It’s five guilders for passage if you want a ride on my cart, girl.”

Rey scowled and set her staff against the ground. “Do I look like I have five guilders?” she asked rhetorically, gesturing to her road-dusted clothes. “I need to get to Jakku.”

The man scoffed as he finished loading the last heavy sack into his cart. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard that before,” he said. “Most people are trying to get _away_ from Jakku. But it’s a firm price: five guilders or you walk.”

Her stomach rumbled, and Rey bit back an oath as the man stared at her expectantly. She glanced down at his money purse, and her fingers itched. It would be easy, so easy to…

The man followed her gaze and scowled, clutching the purse tightly. “So you’re that type,” he said in a rough voice. “There’s enough thieves on this path without having one riding beside me. Best of luck, girl. You’ll need it on these roads.”

Rey spat on the ground as the man’s cart slowly creaked away, and she sat heavily against a nearby rock, resting her staff against her knee.

Her clothes were stiff with dirt, but the river was too far off to merit the journey with her water skein still full.

Her stomach groaned again, and Rey rested her hand against it.

Three days without food.

She’d done far worse, long ago.

Rey rested her elbows against her knees and pursed her lips, mentally charting the most tenable path forward. She’d wandered into the Outer Rim, where settlements were few and far between.

She’d grown soft, Rey thought humorlessly. Having so much to eat and so little to worry about when she lived in…

The memory of flame and smoke, of a terrifying figure in black came to her in a rush, and she quickly rose to her feet and began a brisk walk.

There was a burn on her shoulder that still ached, but it was a small kindness that it lay to the left, unabraded by the strap of her staff.

And…

Rey closed her eyes and reached out in her mind’s eye, searching the flowing tendrils of the Force around her.

_There_. A faint light, far, so far away, but still very much present.

Leia was alive.

It had been Rey’s only comfort as the sun had risen on the ashes of Alderaan. The flags of Coruscant had flown above its ruin, a grave message for any other kingdoms who dared to defy it.

Submit or burn.

Rey, for her part, had been left with scarce more than the clothes on her back, the staff and sword she’d retrieved from the armory, and the last fading remnants of a kind life burned to ash in front of her.

And in the midst of it all…

The memory of the Dread Knight Ren’s helm still haunted her most nights, as she stole brief moments of sleep on the roadside and woke shaking and struggling to breathe.

She knew it was the last thing Ben had ever seen.

Nearly the last thing she had.

It was something Rey did not dwell on, the strange, mad idea that the Dread Knight Ren had somehow spared her as Alderaan burned. It was too heavy a thought, that she should be granted kindness by the same hand that had slain her beloved.

And soon enough, the desperate search for food and shelter outweighed any confusion and pain that night had wrought.

Word had reached her just days earlier that the resistance survived, and that Leia and Poe were rebuilding alliances in the north and west.

They would welcome her, Rey knew. Be overjoyed to see her.

But…

Rey swallowed hard and gripped the strap holding her staff across her back.

Alderaan was gone.

Ben was dead.

She couldn’t help but wonder if her greatest mistake had been leaving Jakku in the first place.

And so, despondent and aimless, she’d once again taken to the road, mile after mile, counting her breaths and ignoring her hunger as she tried to find her way home.

If she even had one anymore.

Rey’s brow furrowed at the sound of a plaintive whine behind her, and she slowly turned to see a small dog in the road, limping and holding up one paw.

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you come near me, you mangy thing,” she said. “I don’t have enough food for myself, let alone anything for you.”

The dog sat heavily on its rump, whining again and continuing to hold up its paw.

Rey sighed and scrubbed a hand across her face. “If you’re hurt, I don’t have anything for it. Your best bet would be to find a settlement. There’s an outpost that way.” She jerked her thumb east.

The dog whined and shuffled a few steps closer to her, limping heavily and staring up at her with dark, pleading eyes.

Rey glared at it for a long moment before sighing again and kneeling down, taking the dog’s paw in hand and turning it over. “No thorns or stones,” she said, pursing her lips. “That’s a good sign, at least.”

The dog’s fur was surprisingly clean for the road, mottled white and orange-rust, and it suddenly pulled its paw from Rey’s hand and perked up.

“What are you…”

Rey’s words ended in a scream as the ground gave way beneath her and she found herself in a hastily-dug pit, the sides smooth and impossible to climb.

“...of course,” she muttered as she heard the dog’s frantic barking from above her, and it ran along the edge of the pit, no doubt signaling to whoever had dug it. “I hope your masters know I probably have less than they do!” she yelled up to the dog.

“Good work, Beebee,” she heard a young man’s voice say. “Let’s see what you…”

A dark face appeared at the top of the pit, peering down to where Rey stood with her arms crossed, looking up in clear irritation.

“...girl. Nope. _Nope_ ,” the young man said, waving his hands. “Chewie, there is no way we’re robbing a girl. Period.”

There was a short, loud response in some unintelligible tongue.

“I know you couldn’t have known who the trap would catch! But we’re letting her go, _now._ ”

“What’s going on, ‘big deal’?” an older man’s voice asked, and it sounded amused. “First catch and you’re already losing your nerve?”

“‘First catch,’ hell! There’s a _girl_ down there.”

The older man appeared beside the younger, frowning down at Rey. “Cute,” he said with a shrug. “Needs a bath, though.”

Rey’s mouth dropped open, her eyes narrowed in indignation.

“So what do we do with her?” the young man asked in clear exasperation.

The older man shrugged again. “Take her with us, I guess. At least until we hit the next settlement.”

A third man appeared at the edge of the pit, and Rey’s eyes widened as he all but blocked out the sun, taller and broader than any man she’d ever seen, with thick, curly hair and giant hands.

He turned to the older man and asked something unintelligible.

“What’s that?” the younger man asked wearily.

“He asked if anybody wants a peanut.”

The young man sighed and rested his head against the edge of the pit.


	3. Inconceivable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in posting this chapter — I was out of town for my birthday and have been swamped with prepping for my upcoming fall classes (living that professor life, all day every day). 
> 
> We're finally starting to hit our TPB story in this one; hold on tight and keep an eye out for the shrieking wolves.

**Chapter Three: “Inconceivable”**

**\---**

There had been a certain ease to Rey’s life in Alderaan that she had almost come to take for granted in her years living amidst its pastoral beauty. There was the peacefulness of her surroundings, of course, and the warmth and comfort to be found in the royal family that had taken her in almost as one of their own.

Beyond that, though, there was a basic level of survival, once so hard-fought for, every inch of every day, that became so easily met that Rey nearly forgot that she had ever gone without them. In Alderaan, she was clothed, she was treated when wounded or sick, she was cared for…

And most importantly, she was fed.

Long, cold nights on Jakku spent doubled over with her stomach twisting in hunger had faded into Alderaanian abundance, where there was always an extra spice cake, always another cut of meat, and royal charity and kindness provided for those without means.

How easily it had all been set to flame.

And as quickly as the blooming gingerbells had burned, Rey once more found herself in a hardscrabble fight for survival, where only the strongest — and those with flexible morals and a strong sense of opportunity — earned their bread in a cruel, unforgiving world.

Which led to her current predicament.

“...need her to toss her weapons up here first,” Rey heard the younger man murmur above the pit, out of her view but doubtless consulting with his companions. “She doesn’t look like a soldier to me, but she does look mad as a hornet down there.”

“You mean to tell me she’s not thrilled to be stuck at the bottom of a hole? What a _brilliant_ deduction. Chewie, get the professor a medal the next time we pass civilization.” That was the older man, whose voice was thick with exasperation and more salt than a winter storehouse.

There was a short, loud grunt in response from the foreign giant (Chewie? A strange name, but Rey filed it away for the future just in case).

The two men continued to argue, and Rey rested her back against the sloped dirt side of the pit, chewing on her lip as she methodically took inventory of her situation.

One: she was, in fact, less than thrilled but still very much at the bottom of a pit, approximately twelve feet in height, smooth-sided and with few handholds but still scaleable, particularly to a girl who’d spent years climbing the rocky crags of Jakku...

Two: ...except for the unlikelihood of avoiding the watchful eyes of three humans (one extra-large) and a dog that certainly had no business being so adorable and deceitful all at once.

Three: she was, in fact, armed, with her staff still slung across her chest and her sword in its scabbard, but the men were at that very moment in the middle of tense negotiations on how best to have her surrender her weapons without at least one of them getting killed.

And four: she was hungry and exhausted enough to have little strength for the heroics they seemed to imagine her capable of as they argued whether she was soldier, spy, or assassin.

Which, of course, led to the morally ambiguous five.

In that three hale and well-fed criminals would likely have food and drink either on their person or stored nearby.

And that while Rey could most likely not overpower them, the bickering between them illustrated enough of a split in their faction that she _could_ likely take enough provisions to sustain herself and steal away into the night before they realized she was gone.

But first…

“Oi!” Rey yelled, barely catching the young man’s eye before she tossed her staff up to him.

He yelped and managed to catch the staff awkwardly in his arms, staring down at her in bewilderment. “Okay, you’re gonna need to give me way more of a heads-up before throwing the sword, hear me?” he yelled down.

“I’ll need a rope or something to get me out of here,” Rey called up. “I’ll hand you the sword once I’m up top.”

The old man re-appeared, and his weathered features twisted into a frown. “Sword first,” he insisted. “I’m not turning my back on a girl by herself this far out in the wood. Especially one with a weapon.”

Rey narrowed her eyes. “And what guarantee do I have that you won’t kill me the moment I climb out?”

The older man shrugged. “Not one damn thing. Although I guess I could give you my word as a Corellian.”

Rey scoffed. “Hardly. I’ve known too many Corellians.”

The older man gave her a slow, easy grin, and there was a sly mischief to it that seemed almost familiar somehow. “Is there anything I could say that would get you to trust us?”

“Nothing comes to mind. I’m not easily given to trust under the best of circumstances, which I think we can agree these are not.”

“Hm. What about…” The older man trailed off and glanced over his shoulder as the younger man appeared beside him, mouth pressed into a tight line as he carefully lowered a rope into the pit.

“I swear on the soul of my father that you’ll reach the top alive,” the younger man said, his voice thick and steady with sincerity.

His eyes met Rey’s, and she was struck through with the grim determination in their depths.

Wordlessly, she took the rope and began to haul herself up.

\--- 

“You didn’t say you were going to bind my hands,” Rey groused to the older man as he finished a complicated knot around her wrists. The younger man and the giant had gone to scout camp for the evening with dog in tow, leaving her with what appeared to be their ill-tempered leader.

He grunted in response to Rey’s complaint. “Just until we find out more about who you are and where you came from,” he muttered. “The last time I stumbled across a girl in nice clothes with a weapon and an attitude I ended up married and at war, and I’m not keen to do either again.”

Rey’s stomach turned, and she pulled away and narrowed her eyes. “If you lay one hand on me,” she said in a low, dark voice, “it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

The older man smirked at her. “Take it easy, kid. My wife would have cut off everything I have worth keeping if I’d ever looked at another woman, and I’d have let her.”

“Unless you have her hiding beneath your tunic, I’d rather you keep your hands and talk of women to yourself.”

The man’s smirk burst into an easy grin. “Just what she said on our wedding night.” At Rey’s exasperated stare, he laughed. “Ah, I’m kidding. She’s a good woman. Too good for me, but that’s long in the books at this point. You’d like her.”

Rey pursed her lips and absently chafed her wrists together. “If she’s alive, why aren’t you with her instead of stealing your way through the Outer Rim?”

The man’s smile faded, and there was something sad and distant in his eyes. “Long story,” he said in a gruff voice. “Stubborn as hell, both of us. It’s a miracle we stayed together as long as we did without killing each other. And then there was the trouble with…”

He trailed off, glancing sidelong at Rey before smiling humorlessly to himself. “Ah, that’s the problem with gettin’ old. You forget how to shut the hell up. Anyway. You’re young, you’ve got time to cross that whole marriage bridge.” He inclined his head towards the forest. “Though if you’re on the hunt for a quick tumble, I’m pretty sure you’ve already caught the eye of our young friend.”

Rey managed a half-smile at that. “He seems kind… I mean for a roadside thief and all...  but I’m…”

She paused, features darkening and lips tilting into a frown.

The man smirked again. “Ah,” he said knowingly. “See, that’s the problem with assuming. Already married, are you?”

Rey hesitated before shrugging as best she could with her wrists bound. “Something like that.”

“Ain’t ‘something like’ anything, kid, you’re either married or you’re not.”

“I’m… intended. Sort of,” Rey said quietly. “It’s complicated.”

“‘Complicated’ got a name?”

Poe’s slow grin flashed into her mind, his hesitant kneel and aborted proposal, but it faded into her endless dreams of Ben, pale and haunted, reaching for her…

“...Ben Solo,” she said quietly. “Of Alderaan.”

The man went extremely still and stared at her, silent and unmoving, for a long, heavy moment.

Rey mentally kicked herself even as she kept her face neutral. Surely he knew that Alderaan was burned — the entire realm had been tainted by its ash and smoke — but did he know that Ben was…

“Interesting,” the man said quietly. “That’s real interesting.” He was studying her face with an unnerving intensity. “What’d you say your name was again?”

Rey swallowed. “I didn’t. But it’s Rey.”

There was a flash of recognition on the man’s face, and she could almost see him carefully searching his memory, mulling the name over as he scratched at his chin.

“That’s a nice name,” he said finally. “Not real Alderaanian, though. From what little I know.”

“I’m from Jakku originally. I was taken in by the royal family of Alderaan when I was a girl,” Rey said softly. “Queen Leia was kind to me.”

The man grinned at her, and the brief intensity in his eyes settled into what seemed to be his usual nonchalance. “Yeah, she’s always had a soft spot for strays. Dogs, cats. People.”

Rey narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You know the queen? A scoundrel like you?”

Her eyes widened as the man laughed openly. “Know her. Yeah. You could say that,” he said, shaking his head. “We were in the war together.”

Ah. Rey relaxed a fraction — thieves, perhaps, but anyone who had served alongside Leia in the Great Rebellion probably didn’t plan to slit her throat and leave her for dead.

Probably.

“What’s your name?” Rey asked, feeling suddenly bold. “I don’t think I ever saw you around Alderaan while it stood.”

The man thought for a moment, coughing and rolling out his shoulders.

“Hey!”

Rey and the man both turned sharply as the younger man appeared at the edge of the forest with a broad grin. “So the good news: Beebee tracked down a clearing that should keep us for the night. We should have enough provisions, even with the girl, and there’s a…”

The younger man trailed off, glancing between Rey and the older man, pointing to Rey’s bonds, then back to the other man, before sputtering in indignation.

“What the _f—“_

_“_ Take it easy, Finn…”

“You _tied her up?_ Are you _crazy_?”

“Well it was that or have her rob us blind and tear into the woods to get eaten by the shrieking wolves.” He grinned at Rey, eyes glinting in mischief. “Ever hear of the shrieking wolves, kid?”

The younger man — Finn — stared at him in stark disbelief. “...are you kidding. Are you seriously kidding right now.”

“They call ‘em that because they shriek when they feed on human flesh,” the older man continued, grin widening. “Louder and louder… that’s how you know they’re hungry.”

A twig snapped beneath a heavy foot in the forest, and Rey glanced over her shoulder.

“Now — Rey was it? — if you promise not to alert the constables, kill or otherwise maim us, or dip into our stores when we’re not looking, I’ll untie you and promise nothing’ll happen to you.”

Rey drew herself up to her full height, staring the man dead-on in the eye and slowing her breathing.

“Or,” Finn said, “we could just untie her like _normal_ people would do…”

“We ain’t normal people, big shot.”

There was an insistent pounding in her head, and the forest grew louder.

“I swear, either you untie her or I will. This is just… it’s _inconceivable_.”

“I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”

The rustle of the wind through the leaves.

Heavy paws stalking prey on the forest floor.

Shifting of particles, energy humming.

A thornvine untangling, untwisting, dark eyes watching her…

Rey’s gaze didn’t falter as the rope slid limply from her wrists and settled in a neat coil at her feet.

Finn’s voice trailed off, and the older man stared at her with a grim expression.

“So you’ve found camp for us?” she asked Finn easily.

She shot the older man a shaky grin that quickly faded at the haunted look in his eyes, and his shoulders almost seemed to sag. “That was my best knot, you know,” he said after a moment. “I’ve only ever seen one person undo that.”

He stared at her, unblinking and challenging, and Rey felt a strange shiver down her spine as she carefully retrieved her staff, waiting to see if the man would stop her.

But he just stared.

“My…” she started, slinging the staff across her chest. “Ben taught me a few things.”

The man nodded, still staring at her.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said quietly.

\---

The sky darkened as they made their way into the forest, and they barely reached the makeshift camp Chewie had constructed before it opened with heavy sheets of rain and rolling thunder.

Fortunately, Chewie had constructed a rough shelter of branches and pine tar, and their store of provisions seemed mostly dry.

Still, the late summer air had turned cool in the evening, and Rey shivered, wrapping her arms tightly around herself as the dog settled itself at her feet.

Something large and warm suddenly settled on her head, and she glanced up in confusion to see Chewie resting one giant hand against it.

He said something quietly in his rough tongue, and Rey recognized snippets of what sounded like Wookiee in the shape of it.

“Kashyyk?” she asked, and Chewie’s face split into an ear-to-ear grin as he nodded.

_This — kept my mother warm. Cold nights in the forest_ , he said, or something to that effect, and Rey smiled back at him.

Finn, for his part, was almost shy, giving her his jacket and ensuring she got first pick of rations (and being kind enough to quickly rein in his look of mute horror as Rey stuffed an entire biscuit in her mouth).

It was the older man who remained standoffish, watching her carefully as he sharpened a knife by the campfire.

“So,” he said as Chewie began to roast some small mammal over the fire, barking a warning as the dog eyed it. “Rey.”

Rey raised an eyebrow as she sipped at the mug of something hot and fragrant Finn had handed her.

“Tell me about your…” The man gestured vaguely with his knife. “‘Complicated.’”

Finn glanced at him, brow furrowed in confusion. “Her what?”

“Intended? Fiancé?” The man shrugged. “Whatever they’re calling it these days.”

Finn’s face fell, but he quickly concealed it. “...oh,” he mumbled. “Uh. Boyfriend, maybe. Cute boyfriend?” he asked Rey, not quite looking at her.

Rey managed a half-smile, pulling Finn’s jacket more closely around herself. “I don’t know what to call him either,” she said quietly. “We weren’t…”

The man was watching her, but there was something soft in his eyes that she couldn’t quite decipher. “Let me guess,” he said, and it was the gentlest she’d heard his voice. “You weren’t intended all formal-like.”

Rey took a deep breath and shook her head. “But we…” She sighed and set her mug down, resting her elbows against her knees. “You’d have to know Ben.”

The man smiled at her, soft and sad, and shot Chewie a look.

“He’s…” She closed her eyes, her heart clenching in her chest. They’d given no indication that they knew, so present tense it was. “He has so much pressure on him, and he’s so lonely. So lonely I don’t think he knows how to stand it. His parents… they want what’s best for him, I think, but no one’s ever asked him what he wants.”

Rey slid her hands down to clasp her knees. “We’re alike that way, I think. I’ve always been lonely, too. And together, we…” She swallowed hard around the lump in her throat. “...we’re less lonely. We understand each other. We help each other.”

“And you love him?” Finn asked, and there was a soft acceptance to it.

Rey took a deep breath, then nodded. “I love Ben Solo with everything I am,” she said quietly. “And I know he loves me. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t always want it. And I don’t understand it now anymore than I did then. It just is.”

Finn nodded in response, and Rey managed a smile as something like understanding seemed to pass between them.

The older man came roughly to his feet, shoving the knife into a sheath at his hip and scrubbing a hand across his cheeks. “I’m going for a walk.”

Chewie asked a short question, and the older man simply waved it away as he raised the hood of his poncho and stepped out into the rain.

Rey watched him go with curious eyes, and the Force hummed between the space of her breaths, weaving through the falling raindrops.

There was an echo through the splash of rain, against the quiet evening birdsong, and Rey stared after the man even as Chewie handed her a steaming skewer of meat and the dog wagged its tail hopefully.

_You fool,_ she heard, over and over again in a rough, weathered voice, half-laughing, half-pained. _You goddamned_ **_fool_** _._

_\---_

Rey’s dreams were dark and uneasy, shapeless things that seemed to ache even as she couldn’t quite grasp them.

There was Ben, or the shape of him, and he was in pain.

He was always in pain, somehow, but now he seemed angry, frustrated, a suffocating miasma of darkness and agony.

She heard dark whispers in a strangely familiar voice, and Ben knelt, swaying slightly, and she could hear him pleading.

_Don’t… I can’t… not her…_

Sharp shocks then, lightning striking through him so bright and awful that she could almost feel it through her own chest.

The whispers doubled, growing louder, and the shadows grew longer, darker.

_Then destroy_ **_him._ **

_\---_

Rey woke to the sound of frightened whimpers, and she sat up quickly in her bedroll, her blood chilling as she realized they were not her own.

Finn lay on the other side of the smoldering fire as Chewie and the dog dozed nearby, and Rey crawled to his bedside, shaking his shoulder gently. “Hey,” she said. “ _Hey_.”

Finn’s eyes flew open, and Rey moved back as he struggled to orient himself, breathing heavily as he seemed to recognize his surroundings.

“The forest,” he said under his breath. “Not Coruscant. Not going back there. You can’t...”

Rey stilled as she sat back on her heels. “Coruscant?” she said in a rough whisper. “You’re from _Coruscant_?”

Finn slowly sat up, draping his forearms over his knees and bowing his head. He was silent for a long moment.

“I was a soldier,” he said finally. “Until about a month ago.”

Rey’s blood ran cold. “Alderaan.”

Finn nodded. “I was supposed to be in the first wave of the attack. When we got there… and I saw what was happening…” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I couldn’t do it. Three of my buddies were killed right in front of me. I just… took off into the woods. Wandered for three days until these two found me and took me in.”

Rey’s shoulders shook, her hands balling into fists. “Did you…” She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe evenly. “...did you know the Dread Knight Ren?”

Finn hesitated, then nodded again. “Just in passing,” he murmured. “He’s always under King Snoke’s thumb, doesn’t really mingle with the infantry. And if he ever takes off his helm, I’ve never seen it. Word around the barracks used to be that he’s not even human.”

Finn was quiet. “But… the weird thing is… I don’t know how old the guy is, but I’ve been in Coruscant’s army since I was ten, and he’s been there the whole time, since a long time before me, even, but it’s only in the last few years that…”

Rey’s eyes widened. “...wait. You’ve been a soldier since you were _how_ old?”

He stared at her, eyes dark and mouth pressed into a tight line, before reaching beneath his bedroll and extracting a well-worn but finely-wrought sword.

“This was my father’s,” Finn said softly. “He was a master swordsmith, you know. Ever hear of Arkanis?”

Rey shook her head, and Finn smiled to himself. “No one really has anymore. Not since Coruscant took it over and turned it into a military academy.”

He was quiet for a long moment, turning the sword over in his hands before handing it to Rey.

“It’s beautiful,” Rey murmured, balancing it in her palm.

She returned it to Finn, and another moment of understanding passed between them, the previous discussions of disarming her immaterial in the quiet stillness of the night.

“It was commissioned by a red-haired man for his personal weapon,” Finn said quietly. “He was young. Arrogant as hell. The bastard son of some old Coruscanti general with more money than sense. He had six fingers on his sword hand, so the sword needed to be carefully customized.”

He set the sword in his lap. “It took my father over a year to make it. The red-haired man returned and demanded it, but at a fraction of the price he’d agreed to.” Finn’s eyes darkened, and he closed them for the space of a heartbeat. “My father said no. And the red-haired man stabbed him through the heart.”

Finn swallowed hard. “I watched it all happen. So before my father was even cold I challenged the red-haired man to a duel.”

He shrugged, taking the sword and slipping it back under his bedroll. “I failed. And the red-headed man slaughtered the rest of my family, burned our lands, and conscripted me into military service for Coruscant.”

“Why didn’t you run?” Rey asked in a horrified whisper. “By the gods, Finn.”

Finn rested his hands in his lap as he looked at her, and his gaze was steady. “I spent every day of every year learning everything I could about combat,” he said. “I trained and got stronger so that the next time I see him, when I find him in the ranks, I won’t fail this time.”

He looked into the smoldering fire. “I’ll walk straight up to the red-haired man,” he said, “and I’ll say to him…”

Rey wrapped her arms around her knees and waited.

“I’ll say… ‘hello,’” Finn said quietly. “‘My name is Finn of Arkanis. You killed my family. Prepare to die.’”

The fire popped.

“How long have you been looking for him?” Rey asked softly.

“Fifteen years,” Finn said. “Coruscant is so big and I was so far down in the ranks that I never found him. I got hints, but not enough to follow. And now…” He sighed. “I’m not even in Coruscant. I’m not sure I’ll ever find him.”

Rey hesitated before laying her hand on Finn’s forearm. “I think you will,” she said. “I wouldn’t bet against you.”

Finn crooked a smile at her and patted her hand awkwardly. “Thanks,” he said. “You know…” He hesitated. “...your Ben is a lucky guy. I hope he knows that.”

Rey’s face fell, and she dug the fingertips of her free hand in against her thigh.

“My Ben is dead,” she said softly.

Finn’s brow furrowed in confusion. “But…”

“Three years ago,” she said. “The Dread Knight Ren attacked his uncle’s training temple and…” She closed her eyes, and the words seemed to stick in her throat.

Finn was quiet for a moment.

Then:

“So it’s settled. We’ll find the red-haired man and the Dread Knight Ren and get revenge for both of us.”

Rey managed a watery smile at that, and she gratefully accepted Finn’s tentative hug.

“You’re on,” she said, burying her face against his shoulder.

\---

The first deep-blue light of morning broke through the trees, and Rey heard the hiss of a fire being extinguished, then hushed voices.

“What do you want me to say?” The older man’s voice, heavy and exasperated. “You want me to break her heart? More than he already did? The poor kid’s been through enough.”

Chewie’s response was low, but Rey recognized the shape of _deserves the truth_ and _hurt more_.

The older man sighed and sat heavily on a fallen log. “Can you imagine he did that good for himself, though?” he laughed, shaking his head. “Leia mentioned her often enough that I figured she had to be something special. But Ben…” He sighed again. “The rest of it was hard enough. Alderaan was hard enough. But breaking that girl’s heart…”

Chewie grunted in response, and it was almost mournful.

“There was too much darkness in him,” the man murmured. “To the last of it.”

Rey was still and silent, wrapped up in her bedroll, her eyes closed and her head spinning as she attempted to process the man’s words.

He knew Ben.

Somehow, he knew Ben.

“And you can stop pretending you’re not awake, kid, you snore louder than a damn bantha when you’re asleep.”

Rey’s eyes flew open to see the older man frowning at her from across the extinguished fire pit. “...um,” she said awkwardly, “good morning.”

He stared evenly as Rey came to her feet, swaying slightly and gathering up her bedroll in her arms. “So you know,” she said. “That Ben is…”

“Han! Chewie!”

… _Han_.

Rey dropped her bedroll, staring at him with mouth agape as the name registered like a pebble thrown into a dark pond.

“...you’re Han Solo,” she said dumbly. “You’re Ben’s…”

Han shrugged and came to his feet. “Nice to meet you after Leia spent about a hundred letters telling me about our ‘soon-to-be daughter-in-law, if Ben ever gets his shit together.’” He paused, crooking that slow grin at her. “Did think you’d be taller, though.”

“ _Han!_ ”

Finn burst into the camp, disheveled and wild-eyed.

“Coruscant is riding this way,” he said breathlessly. “Mounted cavalry, moving quick.”

His features were ashen as he looked at Rey, and he swallowed hard.

“...the Dread Knight Ren is leading them,” he said meaningfully.

Rey stilled, and Han closed his eyes on a long sigh.

Finn looked to Rey, brow furrowed in concern. “What do you want to…”

His voice faded as Rey slipped the staff from across her shoulders, hoisting it in her hands and looking at him with her jaw firmly set.

“Exactly what we agreed to,” she said in a low, dark voice.

\---

The men broke camp with the efficiency of those accustomed to living quickly and in brief, stolen moments.

Rey watched as they wrapped up their remaining rations and armed themselves, her eyes widening as Chewie grunted and hoisted a large crossbow that he’d seemingly conjured from thin air.

She started as a leather-sheathed knife was slapped into her hand. “Here,” Han said gruffly, not looking at her.

Rey raised an eyebrow at him, slipping the knife from its sheath. It was a wicked thing, slightly-curved, its blade glinting in the early morning light. “I have a staff,” she said after a moment. “And a sword.” She frowned. “Somewhere. Where did you put it, anyway?”

“Do you know how to use this?” Han asked, jerking his thumb at the knife as if she hadn’t spoken.

“Of course I know how to use it,” Rey said, annoyed.

Han nodded. “That’s why I’m giving it to you.” He tugged at Rey’s right armwrap, ignoring her as she scowled and pulled away. “Keep it under wraps. Here. A sword may be good in a fair fight, but things ain’t always fair, and that’s when you’ll want a little something extra up your sleeve.”

Rey stared at him for a long moment before carefully sliding the knife beneath her armwrap. She turned her forearm, allowing the knife to slip into her palm unnoticed.

Han smiled faintly. “There. You’re a natural, kid.”

_Kid._ “...there’s so much I want to ask you,” Rey said quietly. “Tell you about…”

Searing pain suddenly stabbed through the back of her skull, and Rey gasped and fell to her knees as the Force burst open, as the world spun and faltered and shattered.

She distantly heard Han calling for her.

Distantly heard Finn’s scream of concern.

And felt, horribly, keenly, as the earth shook, as the Force began to bleed.

As a group of black-armored riders appeared at the horizon.

\---

There were nine of them, but they fought like an army.

Finn was an experienced soldier and held his own against the two that cornered him, parrying heavy strikes with his sword and a practiced ease.

Chewie was a terrifying force to behold, firing crossbow bolts one-handed that sent soldiers flying and bellowing a battle cry that seemed to shake the trees around them.

Rey saw her companions only in her periphery as she aimed her staff at the horses’ legs, making swift work of their riders once they’d been brought to ground. It took everything in her to keep steady and upright, and her vision seemed to swim, everything around her sounding muffled and strange.

_Not now, not now…!_ she screamed to the Force as she took down an attacker who charged at her with an axe raised high, as the world seemed to pulse and hum, louder and louder and…

It stopped, as suddenly as it had begun, as she spun and saw Han standing at the far edge of the clearing, close, too close to a sharply-sloping hill.

He was unarmed, hands clenched into fists at his sides, and his jaw was set.

The Dread Knight Ren stood across from him, broadsword tightly gripped in one hand.

Han took a hesitant step forward, and Rey could see his lips moving.

_No…_ She pushed aside her attacker in a daze, stumbling into a run and attempting to cover the ground between them.

Rey’s heart stopped as the Dread Knight Ren moved suddenly and speared his sword through Han’s chest.

“ _No!_ ”

Her own anguished scream tearing from her throat, her knees locking, eyes unseeing even as a crossbow bolt scored her cheek as it flew past her and shot through the knight’s armor.

The knight stumbling, clutching his abdomen, seeming disoriented even through his heavy armor and helm.

Finn and Chewie’s screams as Rey rushed forward, her vision bleeding red, everything in her narrowed to pain, to heartbreak, to pure screaming agony…

The ground shook beneath her, and she barely registered the Dread Knight Ren turning to face her, barely felt the jolt of shock and pain through the Force before the earth split open and she tumbled downward, over and over, down and down and down.

\---

Rey woke with a gasp, her head pillowed against soft grass even as every inch of her body screamed in pain.

_Han_ , she remembered in a rush, and she sat up quickly, eyes darting around in a panic.

Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the dark-armored figure crouching just a few feet away, watching her carefully.

“You should rest,” the Dread Knight Ren said, and his voice was rough and deep, muffled by his helm. “That was quite a fall, your highness.”

Rey stared at him, shoulders shaking in rage, breath coming short and sharp as she noticed her staff lying beside him.

In one fluid motion, she _reached_ , calling the Force to her in a rush…

Her eyes widened as the knight held up his palm and she found herself suddenly immobilized, stock-still no matter how she struggled against the invisible hold.

Rey’s blood ran cold, and she could scarcely breathe as knight slowly rose, keeping his hand extended.

_The Dread Knight Ren had the Force_.

By the gods, no wonder Ben had fallen.

“Murderous _snake_ ,” Rey spat at him as he approached her.

The knight said nothing, merely continuing to hold her immobile.

“You’re the Dread Knight Ren, aren’t you?” Rey seethed. “When I break free of this I’ll see you die slowly, cut into a thousand pieces.”

The knight was silent, tilting his head before lowering his hand.

Rey fell back hard onto her backside, biting back a curse at the roil of pain through her already-aching limbs. “You’re rather hale for a man who’s taken a crossbow bolt to his side,” she bit out. “Where are the others?”

“The thieves you call friends? You’ll doubtless be relieved that I have no idea.”

He crouched down beside her again, and Rey glared at him in open hatred.

“You want to kill me,” the knight said, and it was strangely soft, even beneath his helm. “Horribly. Painfully. Why loose your venom on me so?”

Rey trembled in anger as she struggled to come to her feet. “You killed my love,” she said, and her voice and heart broke all at once on the words.

The knight seemed to consider this as he too rose. “It’s possible,” he said. “I’ve killed many.”

He seemed agitated, and began to pace around her. “Was it the old man?” he said, voice rough-edged.

Rey snorted. “Hardly.”

“A man from the road, then? A murderer, a traitor, a thief? All three, perhaps?” His Force signature was ragged, blood-red, and Rey staggered from the pain of it.

“A prince,” she said between gritted teeth. “Haunted. Lonely. But…” She closed her eyes for the space of a heartbeat. “...warm-hearted, even when he was frightened. And with eyes like…”

Rey was trembling as she opened her eyes and leveled the knight with a look of pure, raw hatred. “He was at his uncle’s temple on Ahch-To when the Knights of Ren attacked. And the Dread Knight Ren never leaves survivors.”

The knight was still, and his hands curled into fists at his sides.

“You say you loved him.”

Rey stared at him in open disbelief. “He was my heart,” she said, her voice rough with unshed tears. “I died with him that day.”

Her eyes widened as the knight laughed, a short, dark, ugly thing beneath his helm.

“And he believed that you loved him,” he said, voice dark and awful. “Poor fool. I remember him. He spoke of you as he died.”

The knight drew himself up to his full height, and Rey felt herself once more held still in the grasp of the Force.

“Ben Solo,” the knight said darkly. “Yes. I remember. He was weak and foolish. You should thank me for destroying him before he had to face what you really are.”

“And _what am I_?” Rey raged at him, struggling against her bonds and spitting at his helm.

“How long did it take you to find your new beau after he died?” the knight yelled back at her. His broad shoulders were heaving beneath his armor, and he was visibly shaking. “Did you save time and bethroth yourself the same day, or did you wait an entire week to become engaged out of respect for the dead?”

Rey’s chest heaved as a sob tore through it, and it was overwhelming: Ben and Alderaan and Han and so much death, all because of _this man_ …

“Take off your helm,” Rey seethed. “And show me what _you_ really are.”

The knight faltered then, and he took a heavy step backwards as his shoulders sagged. He made a quick gesture with one hand, and Rey staggered back as the Force hold dissipated around her limbs.

The knight stared at her, not speaking for a long, heavy moment.

Then, so quietly Rey barely heard it beneath the helm:

“As you wish.”

... _no_.

The Force seemed to be breaking apart around her as the knight slowly raised his hands to his helm.

No… no, no, _no_ …

Smooth black locks tumbling free.

Rey’s trembling hands clasped over her mouth, eyes going wide as her stomach churned.

The Dread Knight Ren’s helm fell to the ground with a thud.

The pale, angular face of Ben Solo stared back at her.

The world seemed to stop spinning, the stars themselves winking into darkness and every breath in existence stilling.

There were no words for the emotions rushing hot and awful through Rey’s blood, through her mind, through her long-broken heart that somehow seemed to be newly ripped in two.

There were no words.

And so she settled for taking in a deep, shaky breath before reaching out and punching him in the face.

Hard.


	4. The Dread Knight Ren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so. Yeah. I suck and this is beyond ridiculously late. It's also kind of a block-breaker chapter, so it's on the short side. Hopefully the fact that it's "The Dread Knight Ren" (cough) and Rey finally meeting face-to-face and having a few discussions will make it worth the wait. 
> 
> On the plus side, Chapter 5 is already very much underway and should be posted by the end of the week, so I double-pinky-promise that the wait this time will be much shorter. Thank you all so much for your patience, and for reading!

**Chapter Four: "The Dread Knight Ren"**  

**\---**

Her wrist hurt. Her thumbs, fingers.

Her everything. 

Ben ( _the Dread Knight Ren_ , and it still seemed like a dream, something dark and amorphous and awful) observed Rey mildly, touching the darkening red-purple bruise already spreading across his jaw. “Not bad,” he said. “Poor follow-through, though. Is your hand alright?” 

Rey stared at him, fairly vibrating with anger, curling her aching hand into another fist and struggling to sort through the seemingly endless words tripping over her tongue.

_Nothing about me is alright._  

_Nothing about_ **_this_ ** _is alright._  

His armor — the _Dread Knight Ren’s armor_ — clinked softly as Ben pressed his hand more firmly to his jaw, and it was another horrible realization on top of the one that had utterly decimated Rey’s worldview. 

The Dread Knight Ren had killed Ben. 

And the king. 

And burned Alderaan to the ground. 

And possibly even killed Finn. 

But he _was_ … 

“The others,” Rey managed, shuddering at the weakness in her voice. “Did you kill them, too?” 

There was a flash of recognition in Ben’s dark eyes, and he seemed to pale, his shoulders hunching, something of a wild, wounded creature to his bearing. “I told you I have no idea as to their fate. We both tumbled from the cliffside, and I awoke before you. As for…” He paused, taking in a deep, shuddering breath. “...I killed who I was sent to kill,” he said shortly, the words fairly spat into the air. “It was enough. It has to be.”

There was a knot rising high in her throat, so tight Rey could scarce swallow around it. “...you killed your _father_.”

Ben said nothing, merely narrowed his eyes at her in response. “And you got engaged,” he said in a low voice. “We’ve both of us committed sins of the heart, I’d say.”

Rey bit hard on her fist, somewhere between hysterical laughter and a throat-searing scream. “Engaged,” she said after a moment, ripping her fist from her mouth with teeth marks scored so deeply across her knuckles they bled. “You come to me after three years of purest agony as a murderous ghost, dressed in the livery of the enemy, the blood of your father and the ashes of your…” She closed her eyes. “...of _our_ home on your hands, after raining down death and destruction in the service of monsters, burning and slaughtering your way across the realm…” 

Ben watched her warily as she took a step forward, standing toe-to-toe with him, her shoulders heaving. 

“...and after leaving me behind the way you swore you never would,” Rey seethed, “after breaking what little of a heart I had left and validating my worst fears about anyone I allowed close… you _dare_ accuse me of faithlessness? You stand there, you wear the face of my beloved while corrupting everything about him I held dear and berate me for inconstancy at the mere _thought_ that I would have something of a life without you? That I might have the courage to move on?” 

Ben’s eyes darkened, but he remained still.

“And for your information, _Ben Solo_ …” And oh, what a cruel curse to see him once again, risen from the grave, whole and hale in front of her only to be forced to spit his name like vile poison, “I’m not sure who’s feeding you the rubbish you seem so beholden to, but I’m _still_ faithful, foolish and fallen for you as ever.” 

“Perhaps you missed it, girl, but in Alderaan there are penalties when a woman lies,” Ben said in a dark voice, and Rey’s heart turned to ice at the cool disdain in his eyes.

“Alderaan doesn’t exist anymore,” Rey managed, swallowing hard against the cold lump in her throat. “You made sure of that.” 

“And scarce hours before watched you happily in the arms of your new fiancé.” He ground out the word between clenched teeth, roughly pushing past Rey and crossing his arms over his chest. “Yes, I saw it,” he said, hunching in on himself. “Every beat of it. The Force is unyielding in its truth, and I saw every moment with him, the light in your eyes, your happiness, the gentle brush of his hand across your cheek.”

Rey was breathing hard, clenching and unclenching her fists, her shoulders heaving. “And what else did the Force show you?” she raged. “Every night, where I wept in my sleep and wept harder upon waking when I remembered you were truly gone? Every time I woke up screaming at the memory of your ghost, at the pale, haunted version of you that never seemed to leave my mind? The mornings when I would sit with your mother and neither of us could speak for the pain of…”

“You think me a fool?” Ben yelled, whirling around to face her, his face pale with anger. “As though you remembered, as though you mourned, as though you ever _loved_ …”

There was a sharp spear of darkness through her chest, and the Force seemed to wrap tight around her, constricting and awful. Rey saw only rage, hurt, the agony of years spent mourning and longing only to be so horribly thought by the only man she had ever loved, and before she even realized it, the curved knife had slipped into her hand and slashed deeply up and across Ben’s livid face. 

He fell back, clutching his hand to his face even as blood seeped between his fingers, and Rey stared at him in open-mouthed horror, dropping the knife to the ground and violently trembling. “Ben…” she whispered, “oh gods, Ben…” 

Without thinking, she quickly unraveled her left armwrap and brought him to kneel, pressing the cloth to his cut face and attempting to staunch the bleeding. 

“...much better follow-through,” he murmured, and blood dribbled to the corner of his mouth.

“Shut up,” Rey seethed, pressing a bit harder and more roughly than necessary. “With all the blood Coruscant has shed, I doubt this is the worst wound you’ve ever had.”

Ben was silent as Rey roughly cleaned his wound, and Rey was relieved to find it more superficial a cut than the first spray of blood had seemed to indicate. 

“...perhaps you should have aimed lower,” Ben said quietly after a moment. “A straight shot through the heart.”

Rey narrowed her eyes at him, clutching the bloodied cloth in her hand.

“One foul turn would deserve another, after all,” he said, so quietly she scarce heard it, almost more to himself than to her. 

Rey stared at him, tipping his face to one side so she could carefully bandage his wound, and he avoided her eyes.

_Foul turn_.

It was the briefest, barest moment of contrition, if one at all. 

But she tended to his wound just a bit more gently just the same. 

**\---**  

It was the Force, undoubtedly, that had healed them both of their wounds from the earlier battle: the thin score from the fletching of Chewie’s crossbow bolt had already disappeared from Rey’s cheek, and Ben seemed well recovered from the bolt’s strike into his abdomen.

And it was the Force that seemed to flow, warm and comforting, through Rey’s hand as she finished caring for Ben’s wounded cheek, the bleeding gash reduced to a faint scarred line. “Something to remember me by, then,” she murmured to herself as she left Ben’s side and retrieved her staff, glancing over her shoulder as if daring him to stop her. “If you ever should.”

Ben stared at her, absently running the backs of his fingers across the scar. “You think I’ve forgotten you?” he asked, eyebrows raised. 

Rey slung her staff across her back and glared at him. “I think it a kinder fate to imagine you simply forgot my memory than that you chose to never once again find me in three years’ time.”

She quietly retrieved and cleaned her knife as she gazed around at their surroundings, attempting to orient herself: there, to the east, a line of sharp, towering mountains, high rolling plains to the south… 

And there, to the west, a dark, forbidding forest, with black moss and trees bending inward that seemed to blot out all light. 

“That’s Dagobah Forest,” Ben said, suddenly beside her, and Rey scowled and moved away. “The Fire Swamp. It’s said none have survived it except those who have the Force.”

“Well it’s a good thing I’ve the Force, then,” Rey said brusquely, starting towards the forest entrance. 

Her heart turned over at the sound of familiarly-heavy footsteps a half-heartbeat behind her, and she was torn between the thrill of her beloved’s resurrection and the agony of his identity, as though she’d wished him back to life on a cursed stone.

“You still need a teacher,” Ben said, keeping pace just behind her. “You’re still raw, even after all this time.”

“Better raw in the light than practiced in the darkness, _Ren_ ,” Rey said. She stopped on the path and turned to face him, gesturing to his cheek. “Besides which, I was skilled enough to catch you off-guard and inflict that… and heal it enough to keep your looks soft and pretty.”

Ben regarded her curiously, and he looked almost abashed. 

Rey’s heart leapt to her throat at the look in his eyes, soft and wary, and in that moment she could almost pretend that he was still her Ben. 

It fled almost as quickly as it had appeared, and Ben glanced to the darkening sky as it flashed with lightning in the distance. His posture grew straighter, his demeanor cooler, and he rested his hand on the hilt of the sword at his side. “I should inform you,” he said, and his voice trembled slightly even as he attempted to sound grave, “before you attempt to enter the forest, that it is within our holdings, and you are now my charge, a traitor to the realm and a prisoner of Coruscant.”

Ben stared at her, ramrod-straight and tall with purpose.

Rey rolled her eyes. 

“‘Prisoner’. Yes, well, I’ll get right on that.” 

“Rey,” Ben said darkly, and her heart hurt to hear her name on his lips for the first time in years and spoken in such coldness. “This is wartime, not some childish game.” 

“Brilliant. You can be prisoner of my _arse_.” 

“ _Rey_.” 

She almost laughed at the sheer scandal written across his face, the flush that rose to his cheeks and paled across his scar, and she turned away from him and began to make her way to the forest. 

After a long, heavy moment, Ben followed. 

**\---**  

Dagobah Forest was quite possibly the darkest, eeriest environ into which Rey had ever stepped foot. The air was thick with fog, and it seemed grey-dark even at midday.

“Why do they call it the Fire Swamp?” Rey asked idly as she ducked beneath a thick hanging blackvine. 

Ben glanced a few steps down the vined path before them, raising an eyebrow as a low popping sound emanated through the ground before a tongue of flame shot through a tangle of mushrooms. “Hard to say,” he noted drily.

Rey grimaced and allowed the vine she was holding to fall back into his face. “Prat. You said no one’s ever survived this place — how would they know it sometimes caught fire enough to name it so?” 

“No one’s ever survived it without the _Force_ , at least as far as I know.” Ben carefully nudged her to the inside of the path and away from the mushrooms as the popping sounded again. “This place is strong in the Dark Side. They say it speaks to the undecided, the conflicted, and drives them to madness if they stay within its hold for too long.” 

“As though one would build a summer home here,” Rey retorted. “Why are you traveling with me again?” 

“Officially, you’re my…”

“Prisoner, yes, you git. Unofficially, then?” 

“We’ve a better chance of surviving with the two of us than we do alone,” Ben said flatly. “We’ll need a source of potable water sooner rather than later, and with any luck something to eat. It’ll be easier to search with two pairs of eyes, easier to catch something with two pairs of hands.” 

“Scavenged food? Your soft princely self still isn’t well-used to anything not served on a linen tablecloth, fair bet,” Rey said, carefully sidestepping another jet of flame.

Ben stared at her, something hollow and distant in his eyes. “I’ve eaten stale rations above corpses on the battlefield,” he said after a moment. “You’re not the only one who’s suffered over these last years, Rey.” 

There was a light, chill wind through the gnarltrees around them, and Rey turned slowly to face him. “No,” she said in a hollow voice, “but we’ve both suffered through only one of our actions.” 

Ben started to say something before seeming to hold his tongue, gazing at her warily. “...you’re not wearing a ring,” he admitted, a question in his voice. 

“Yes, well, that would be because I’m not _engaged_ ,” Rey said, slipping her knife from its sheath and cutting through a low-hanging vine, “and have little cause to wear one otherwise.”

Ben’s gaze seemed to turn inward, his eyes dark and troubled. 

Rey turned the knife over in her hand before slipping it back beneath her armwrap, and she couldn’t help the sharp pain in her chest at Ben’s seeming confusion. 

She couldn’t blame him, ultimately — three years passed between them, now standing on opposite sides of an all-encompassing war, she unable to look away from the blood on his hands, he seemingly unable to stop searching for the ring he seemed so sure should be on hers.

There were so many questions she wanted to ask him, so many things she wanted to know, so many raw wounds she feared to further abrade.

Perhaps if she started small.

“Can you explain something to me?” Rey asked carefully. 

Ben stared at her, one eyebrow raised. “I can’t promise that.” 

“How are you the Dread Knight Ren?” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Finn said he’d been around for decades, but you’ve only been gone from me for three years?” 

Ben’s features darkened. “Finn. The traitor, you mean?” 

Rey scowled at him. “My _friend_ , I mean. The one you may have slaughtered.” 

“I didn’t. Though death may have found him on the path by now for all I know. Did he tell you what he was?” 

“Far less an evil than you’ve become,” Rey shot back. “And yes. He did.”

Ben was quiet, falling into step beside Rey and helping her cut thick blackvines with his sword. “The Knights of Ren have served the darkness for generations,” he said after a moment. “The Dread Knight Ren has led them for that time.” 

“...again, that doesn’t answer my…” 

“It’s a title,” Ben said flatly. “No more, no less. When I was taken in by Coruscant, I adopted the name Kylo Ren and was granted leadership of the Knights as the Dread Knight Ren. King Snoke has been kind to me. Granted me power, a title.” 

“A fair price for your soul, from the looks of it,” Rey bit out. “Do you truly see nothing wrong with what Coruscant is doing?” 

“Bringing order to the realm?” Ben shook his head. “You were sheltered at Alderaan, Rey. My mother’s arms trafficking aside, you were safe under the mantle of neutrality.”

Rey stared at him, aghast. “Alderaan was _burned to the ground,_ Ben. I was there.” She closed her eyes, the smell of smoke and ash seeming as fresh as the night she’d watched the gingerbells burn. 

“And you survived.”

Rey stopped in her tracks, staring at him. “...yes,” she said slowly. “I… there was a knight. In the armory. He charged, but he — the Dread Knight Ren stopped him. Killed him.” 

Rey’s heart beat faster at the memory of the Dread Knight Ren, the way he had brutally slaughtered the guard that charged her, the way he seemed to stare at her in anguish and pain, the way his Force signature had been agonizing. 

And the Dread Knight Ren was... 

Ben studiously avoided her gaze, heavily slicing through another vine and tossing it aside. 

He _had_ saved her, she realized belatedly.

“Does your king…” 

“I paid a heavy price that night,” Ben said quietly. “There were several who were slated to perish in the flames who ultimately did not.” 

He looked at her, sword arm faintly trembling, eyes dark with meaning.

_Don’t speak it,_ she heard him through their bond, long dormant, and she gasped at the feel of it, rich and warm and pulsing through her blood. _Coruscant still thinks her dead._  

Rey’s blood ran cold as his words registered, as she remembered the Dread Knight Ren running through the flames, towards the House of Alderaan. 

He knew.

Somehow, Ben knew that Leia had survived. 

And had he… 

“Don’t _speak_ it,” he ground out as Rey opened her mouth to speak. He was breathing hard, his face pale, eyes dark and anguished. “Don’t misunderstand me,” he said shortly. “Your first instincts are correct. I am a murderer.” 

“...I know,” Rey said softly. “I was there. I saw.” 

Han’s name hung suspended in the air between them, unspoken. 

“Why did you hate your father?” she asked after a long moment. 

There was another loud popping sound, and her eyes widened as Ben gingerly placed a hand at her waist and pulled her out of the way of the flames. “I didn’t hate him,” he said in a low voice. 

Rey narrowed her eyes and shoved him away from her. “You had a father who loved you,” she said, biting back tears. “He cared about you, about your well-being. He cared whether you lived or died.” A hot tear escaped, coursing its way down her cheek, and she brushed it away roughly. “So why… why did you kill him? I don’t understand.” 

“You don’t?” Ben’s voice was soft, so soft, and Rey ached to hear it. “Your parents abandoned you on Jakku years before my father set sail to lands unknown just to be rid of me.” 

“They didn’t! And _he_ didn’t.” 

Ben gazed at her with gentle eyes, almost condescending, and Rey glared back at him. “How many years were you at Alderaan, Rey? How many times did you see Han Solo at the house?” 

They both knew the answer, and Rey couldn’t meet Ben’s gaze. She could feel him gently probing at her in the Force, and she knew that he knew she’d only first met the man he carefully avoided calling “father” scarce a day before. 

“It’s your weakness,” Ben murmured, shaking his head. “You’re always looking for your family. In my mother. In Han Solo. You can’t stop needing someone to look after you.” 

He moved closer to Rey, and she forced herself to meet his eyes even as her tears fell. “He would have disappointed you,” Ben said, still in those deceptively dulcet tones. “Han Solo was no father. No husband, no man. How many nights did I wait for him to return? How many nights did my mother have to run the estate by herself? How much did she long for her husband, how much did she grow to resent her son for being the catalyst that drove him away?” 

“Don’t you speak of your mother’s pain,” Rey said in a low voice, tight with tears. “You’ve no right to it, not after how deeply she mourned you.”

Rey wrapped her arms tightly around herself even as she drew herself up to her full height and forced herself to keep her gaze on his. “We buried you, Ben,” Rey said, and her voice broke on his name. “We stood side by side and grieved as only women can, as the truest women who ever saw fit to love you, as the only people in the world who died with you.”

She shook her head, finally breaking her gaze and continuing along the path. “Don’t speak of either of our pain when you can’t even begin to grasp the magnitude of it.” 

Another low rumble and popping sounded. 

Rey walked straight through the flames. 

\--- 

Night slowly began to fall, and the forest grew even darker, lit only by the eerily-shining bioluminescent moss that seemed inches thick on every surface and the torch Rey hefted in her left hand.

“We’ve already passed this tree, at least three times,” Rey said finally as she and Ben stood in a small clearing. “I’ve marked it, here.” She touched one hand to a series of small scores against its trunk. 

Ben shrugged. “Nothing for it. We have to keep going.” 

“We’ve totally lost our bearings and your solution is to go deeper into the nightmare forest?” 

“My solution is to find a source of water before we’re in real trouble in the next day or so. I’d think a girl from Jakku would have a greater sense of importance with water and its role in survival.”

Rey pursed her lips in irritation as they attempted to clear a path north of the tree, holding the torch so Ben could more easily see the vines he was cutting. “Of the two of us,” she observed, “I’d always considered myself far more adept at survival, but you _are_ essentially a ghost.” 

Ben raised a quizzical eyebrow at her as pushed aside a large vine. The ground just beyond was pale and sandy, and Rey felt a strange uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. “How did you survive the massacre at Ahch-To, anyway?” she asked carefully. 

Ben was quiet for a long moment before stepping over a log and making his way forward. “The question is who told you I was dead,” he said finally.

Rey’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to speak.

It turned into a scream as Ben set foot on the sands she had only now identified. 

As he quickly sank down and disappeared from view.


	5. The Fire Swamp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for staying with me through all of the long delays and the heartbreaking angst of the last chapter! I hope this one answers a lot of questions, clears up a lot of confusion, and hopefully makes you all very happy. :)
> 
> (Please note that this is an exposition-heavy chapter, but I've tried my best to keep a good rhythm and keep it from being too much of an information dump. There's also a tiiiiny bit of content that earns this fic its M rating. Nothing major by a long shot, but just in case.) 
> 
> Enjoy!

**Chapter 5: “The Fire Swamp”**

**\---**

In the deserts of Jakku, there were a great many things to fear. Hunger was chief among them, for the desert was bleak and unforgiving, and food dear and scarce. There were also thieves, thick as flies on the ground, every man, woman, and child searching for shallow pockets and unguarded hauls of scrap to trade for their next meal.

But there were also the sinking fields.

Some were vast, undulating waves of sand, easily avoided by all but the most careless.

But there were also small, hidden pits, appearing almost as smooth, unbroken sand, only to give way beneath a wayward scavenger’s foot and drag them down beneath.

Rey had been caught only once, when she was scarce out of swaddling and still new to the dangers of the desert. One misstep and she and her day’s meager haul had disappeared beneath the sands.

It had taken her breath away in a moment of pure panic before she’d settled and calmed and managed to slowly extricate herself from the pit. In all her years, even to the night Alderaan burned, she’d never experienced such utter terror in a single moment.

Until she saw Ben sink down into similar sands, gone from her sight as quickly as his ghost had reappeared.  

“ _Ben!_ ” Rey screamed, rushing forward and coming to a staggered halt at the edge of the pit. The sand was a sickly white-yellow color, and it seemed almost a living thing, violently tossing and undulating as Ben no doubt panicked and struggled beneath its surface.

It was one of the few lessons she remembered from her parents, before they’d disappeared as well: _if you’re caught by the sands, Rey, don’t struggle. Many a traveler’s been taken in and drowned just for trying to fight. And the sands claim those prizes much more greedily than those who stay calm and find a path back to the light._

Rey closed her eyes and willed her harsh, ragged breathing to settle, searching for Ben through the Force. _Ben,_ she thought, _stay calm. Please stay calm and wait for me._

_I’m coming._

Rey gritted her teeth as she unraveled a nearby blackvine from a low-hanging branch with trembling fingers, tugging on it to test its strength.

She stared at the sands for one long, wary moment before taking a deep breath and diving in.

\---

The world went dark, and there was nothing but sand: in her eyes, filling her lungs, scraping along her skin. Rey would have screamed, but there was no air, and no one to hear it besides.

_Ben!_ she sent in a desperate, crazed scream through the Force, reaching blindly through the sands with one hand as she clung to the vine with the other, yet finding nothing. _Ben, please… please…_

The Force seemed to still, shift, every grain of sand separating and pierced through with a soft, warm light.

And there, in the eye of the Force, pale and utterly silent, deep, far too deep within the sands, was Ben.

It was impossible to tell if he was still breathing, if his heart still beat. Blinded by sand, guided only by the unseen hand of the Force, Rey hoisted his large, inert frame up, slung halfway across her shoulders, and slowly, hand over hand, began to pull them out.

It should have been an agonizing endeavor, for Ben was just as tall and broad as she remembered him, and it was through the Force alone that Rey had not yet perished.

But the Force seemed to guide her hands along the vine, seemed to carry Ben’s weight for her.

Whatever the Force willed, it seemed it wasn’t ready for either of them to die quite yet.

The sand grew thinner, lighter, and Rey finally burst back to the surface, clinging desperately to the vine. The arms around her shoulders tightened as a violent, explosive coughing sounded from the dark head resting weakly against her nape, and Rey nearly flung him off her as they both lay prone and gasping for air on a near patch of solid ground.

Rey coughed and gagged, wiping sand from her mouth as Ben rolled to his side and retched, his shoulders heaving.

When he turned back to face her, his armor covered in sand, eyes unfocused, skin white-pale, he looked for all the world as terrified and disbelieving as Rey imagined she had at the first sight of the phantom that had become her Ben.

“...why?” he croaked, coughing again into his fist as he pushed himself up on one arm. He looked at her like a frightened, wounded animal, and somehow it hurt to see the look in his eyes.  

“Why what?” Rey managed, sitting up and shaking sand from her hair. The three-bun style she’d kept since her parents had first disappeared all those years ago had come undone, and her hair lay unbound and tangled across her shoulders.

Ben’s breathing had evened a fraction, and yet he still stared at her in stark disbelief, wary and frightened all at once. “...why did you _save_ me?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

Rey stilled, her hands half in her hair, and slowly looked at him.

There was fear in his eyes, but also something softer, something aching and open within his disbelief.

She reached tentatively through the Force, seeking what it might be, but the Force seemed to have finished with them for now and remained resolutely silent.

Rey pursed her lips and drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms tightly around them and averting her gaze. The blackvine still rippled gently on the surface of the sandy pit, and she could feel Ben’s eyes, steady and unwavering on her.

“...I didn’t spend three years mourning you to watch you die all over again,” Rey said finally.

Ben looked away then, closing his eyes and seeming to hunch in on himself.

Neither of them spoke for a long, heavy moment, as the air grew thick with fog and the cry of a mynock trilled in the distance.

“I think you and I need to talk,” Ben said, very quietly. “I fear it. I fear the consequences of it. But…”

Rey waited, raising her head slowly from her knees to look at him.

“But you deserve the truth,” Ben finished. “From someone.”

He stood on shaky legs, taking a moment to find his footing, before taking a deep breath and extending his hand down to Rey.

She stared at it for a long, painful moment, at the scarred skin of his palm, the shape of his fingers, the callouses from endless swordfights.

There was unseen blood on this hand, she knew. This hand had slain the innocent, razed the countryside, committed only the gods knew how many sins again the realm, against his kin.

Against her heart.

And yet…

“I want to know,” Rey said quietly. “Whatever it is… I need to know the truth.”

Wordlessly, she took his hand.

\---

They walked carefully, side-by-side, with Ben leaning against Rey for support, until they came to a clearing that seemed free of spurting flames and appeared to be solid packed earth. Ben had a deft hand with flame, even with the damp moss and cracked branches Rey scavenged for kindling, and before long they were seated across from each other at a small but growing fire.

“What did they tell you?” Ben asked, and his scarred features danced with firelight. “My mother. Luke. Anyone. Did they tell you what happened that night?”

Rey was quiet, resting her forearms against her crossed legs. “It was snowing,” she said at last, her voice distant as her memory cracked open to one of the cruelest days of her life. “And cold. So cold. And then I felt something in the Force. Something agonizing, like I’d had my very bones broken.”

She closed her eyes. “I knew it was you. I knew something had happened, so I ran to the house straight away to find your mother. And she… Leia…”

Ben stiffened across the fire as Rey opened her eyes and fixed him with a pointed, tear-filled glare. “She was holding a missive from your uncle. He said that the Dread Knight Ren had attacked, that Ahch-To had been razed to the ground. And he said that…” Rey shook her head, digging her fingertips into the fabric of her trousers. “Leia told me you were dead.”

Ben was preternaturally still, and his eyes grew dark with shadows. “And Luke Skywalker told her. You.”

“Not in person. He disappeared after that night. No one’s seen him since. That was the last message we ever received from him. Leia reached out to him through the Force, and all she got was a confirmation of the letter before he seemed to fall away from existence.”

Rey’s eyes widened as Ben suddenly laughed, a short, ugly thing. “And you believed him,” he said.

Rey narrowed her eyes. “Why shouldn’t I have?” she fired back. “We hadn’t heard from you in months. You’d all but disappeared. And the Force…” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I felt it. The moment the darkness took over. The moment my Ben was destroyed. I knew it was true, in my heart.”

Ben was quiet for a long moment as the fire popped. “It nearly was,” he said softly, not looking at her. “If I hadn’t defended myself, it would have been.”

“Defended yourself?” Rey repeated, incredulous. “From _who_?”

“Who did I always fear, Rey?” Ben said, so quietly she barely heard him. “Who feared _me_ , feared my power and my strength as he would eventually have feared yours had I let him take you?”

Rey felt a cold chill down her spine as Ben’s words slowly registered. “No…”

She inhaled sharply as the world spun and shifted, and Rey found herself on Ahch-To, seeing the world through a younger Ben’s eyes, the world tinted an eerie, unsettling green as she… as _Ben_ woke slowly from a soft dream (of her, she realized belatedly, and felt her cheeks flush).

Only to turn and see Luke Skywalker, hero of the Rebellion, master of the Force, standing above them with his features twisted in rage, his sword drawn and poised to strike.

_No…!_ Rey screamed silently as Luke brought his sword down in a punishing strike, as Ben quickly called his own sword to his hand and moved it to a defensive position. Somewhere, Luke was screaming Ben’s name, and Ben reached one hand heavenward and pulled the stone and thatch building down on them both.

The memory faded in a long scene of fire, of screams, of black-armored knights retrieving a dazed Ben’s wounded body from the rubble.

Ben stared at her across the fire, features impassive as he tossed another branch on.

Rey was shaking, and drew her arms in tightly against herself. “Liar,” she whispered. “It couldn’t… he couldn’t…”

And yet she knew, deep in her heart, that he could have. How many times had Ben returned from Luke’s training temple with haunted eyes? How many nights had he spent wandering the halls of Alderaan’s manor house with his uncle’s words of reproach echoing in his ears?

But from stern disappointment to…

“You know it’s true,” Ben said softly. “I’ve committed many crimes and hurt you in countless ways. I know this. I admit this. But I’ve never lied to you, Rey.”

“...I thought you were dead,” she managed, feeling the beginnings of tears pricking at her eyes. “Three years of sorrow and you never once saw fit to tell me otherwise. You don’t call that lying?”

Ben absently poked at the fire. “You’d best question the person who told you I was dead,” he said in a grim voice. “Since she would have known it to be at best a distortion of the truth, at worst an open lie.”

Rey’s gorge rose as the world seemed to blur at the edges of her vision. “No… not Leia, she couldn’t have…”

“In her eyes… in Luke Skywalker’s, in Han Solo’s…” Ben’s features darkened at the name. “...my becoming the Dread Knight Ren would have destroyed their son, their nephew, their protégé, in falling to the darkness, to the enemy in Coruscant. So Ben Solo was dead, from a certain point of view. I imagine they thought it a kindness to spare you my true fate — a fate worse than death to their minds, likely.”

Ben’s words seemed to fade into the background as Rey recalled Han’s words by the campfire just before, spoken in hushed counterpoint to Chewie’s grumbled entreaties.

_What do you want me to say? You want me to break her heart? More than he already did?_

_The rest of it was hard enough. Alderaan was hard enough. But breaking that girl’s heart…_

_There was too much darkness in him… to the last of it…_

_Nice to meet you after Leia spent about a hundred letters…_

_A hundred letters..._

Rey shuddered violently, still processing Ben’s words. “If that’s true,” she began, and even seated she felt light-headed, “then… for three years… the _whole time_ … everyone…”

“They feared you, your untapped power,” Ben interrupted. “They feared you as they had long feared me. And they subjugated you and your strength to their cause by allowing you remnants of a foolish sentiment for what I had once been. What little you had perhaps once had.”

Rey extended one hand, and the fire suddenly flared to life, leaping skywards and burning so hot it nearly singed Ben’s armor as he scrambled back and stared at Rey with eyes gone wide.

“If you believe one thing in existence,” Rey said in a low voice as the fire once more settled to a normal height, “if you feel one truth in the depths of your soul, know this, Ben Solo: I loved you as no woman has ever loved, as no man has ever been loved.” She swallowed hard. “You knew that once. Search my feelings and you’ll know it to be true.”

Ben stared at her, breathing hard, his shoulders heaving.

He said nothing.

“And it’s a fine sight, you disparaging your parents and your uncle for seeking to spare my feelings, spare me the truth.” Rey was trembling, willing her breathing to settle even as her head spun and her blood ran hot with anger. “Did you join Coruscant willingly?”

“Ultimately, yes.”

“And you were granted some freedom in your movement, I’d imagine?”

“Some.”

“Then _why?_ ” Rey managed, voice half a broken sob.

“Why what?” Ben asked evenly.

Rey dropped her head into her hands, tangling her hands into her hair. “Why didn’t you come back like you promised you would?” she asked, the words breaking even as her heart seemed already broken beyond repair. “Even if you fought for their cause, even if you sit before me fully fallen to the darkness, to the enemy… did you spare no thought for me at all? Did it never occur to you to make your way home, even for a single night, to show your face and let me know you still lived?”

She choked back the sob that threatened to tear from her throat. “You _promised_ ,” she said, and it sounded like a plaintive, childish whine even to her own ears, and in that moment there was nothing but the raw, open ache of abandonment, from him, from her childhood. “You told me to wait for you, you _promised_ you’d come back for me!”

“And what good would that have done?” Ben said hotly. “You responded so well to my face when you saw it earlier today. And besides which, when I did…”

He fell silent, staring at the flames with features gone dark and stormy.

Rey stared at him in stark disbelief. “When you did _what?_ ”

Ben was quiet for a long moment, and he refused to meet her gaze.

Then:

“I spent two years confined to the Castle of Coruscant,” he began, almost as if in a dream. “King Snoke thought me a prize beyond measure, and he was keen to use means that would ensure my loyalty to Coruscant, to his cause.”

He hesitated before beginning to shed the outer layers of his armor, his surcoat, his undertunic, baring himself to the waist, and Rey felt herself flush deeply down to her toes.

Until the pale skin of his arms and chest came into view, and she clasped one hand to her mouth at the sight of the burn scars and lacerations that littered his torso and biceps.

“He succeeded,” Ben said mildly. “Two years of training in his dungeons, a place called The Pit of Despair, and by the end of it he’d eliminated my sentiment, leaving only strength and a commitment to the darkness.”

“You look dreadful,” Rey interrupted bluntly. “If this is what the darkness gives you, a lonely life, a body full of scars, and a girl who is only now slightly less inclined to see your head on a pike than she was some hours ago…”

“It was on the way back from the destruction of Yavin,” Ben continued as if she hadn’t spoken, and Rey frowned. “I remember it well. How I’d observed the path we were to take to Coruscant, the Knights and I. Perilously close to Alderaan, to neutral territory, but then Snoke was growing tired of subtlety, of kingdoms that still refused to bend. We were to veer as close as possible to Alderaan’s sovereign borders before returning to Coruscant.”

Ben was quiet, staring into the fire. “You haunted me,” he murmured. “I thought that… perhaps I could exorcise you from my heart if I saw you, one last time. So I altered our course and took us straight through Alderaan.”

Rey stared at him in open horror. “You…”

“It would have been an act of war, had we been caught. But it was easy enough with just my Knights, who swear fealty to me above the king. If they questioned why our path took us so close to the royal estate, they didn’t ask.”

The fire popped again, and Ben closed his eyes. “We reeked of smoke and the battlefield, even after long weeks spent on the road. But all I thought of was you. How you’d looked by starlight. How you’d felt in my arms. It was impossible, but I ached for you. For my Rey. Until we arrived, there at the boundary, and I saw that you were no longer mine.”

Rey’s stomach churned unpleasantly. “Poe.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed sharply at the sound of his name. “Yes, your beloved,” he spat. “He must be worried for you.”

Rey said nothing, merely scowled at Ben across the fire.

“I think it must have been early in your courtship. Or perhaps late, I’ve no idea how quickly you moved on. It was a beautiful spring day, and the two of you were out by the barns. And I saw…” Ben closed his eyes. “I saw you smile, so brightly, and even from a distance I could see your heart in your eyes. And I knew you were gone.”

“Because of one moment with a friend? With a kind face?” Rey seethed, leaning forward. “You burned his home to ashes, Ben. You destroyed his land and his people. Alderaan was a refuge. I became a friend. But _nothing more_.”

“I returned to the road dazed,” Ben continued, oblivious. “King Snoke was furious that I’d violated Alderaan’s boundaries, incensed beyond reason when he learned why I’d gone. And so it became a curse, you see. Snoke is also strong with the Force, and whenever I failed him, failed on the battlefield, he’d provide me with glimpses of your courtship, beautiful moments, your unfettered happiness with your new beau. I saw it. Every moment of it.”

Rey trembled, too angry, too stunned, to even speak.

“It was the night that Alderaan burned,” he said quietly, and his voice was haunted. “I’d been stationed in the Pit of Despair, interrogating a captured soldier from Crait, a member of the Resistance, but the man wouldn’t budge, no matter how I took the screws to him. He held information vital to the destruction of the rebel forces, but he wouldn’t yield.”

Ben stared into the fire with unseeing eyes. “Snoke was furious. Couldn’t see beyond it. And so for my failure, he ordered Alderaan burned.”

“You didn’t have to obey,” Rey seethed. “You didn’t have to go along with it, you didn’t have to ride at the front of the column that destroyed our home!”

“ _I didn’t_ ,” Ben fired back, his scar standing out against the sudden ruddiness of his features. “Snoke and Hux — one of the lead generals of the Coruscant army — were beside themselves with pleasure at the thought of finally ripping the war open and removing one of the last bastions of neutrality. But I…” He went very quiet, staring into the flames. “All I could think of was you, and my mother. And I…” He closed his eyes. “...I told Snoke that I just needed more time, I could get the information we needed if I had his guidance in the Force." 

He opened his eyes, and they were dark with pain. “Snoke saw my weakness for what it was instantly. Saw _you_ behind it. He asked me if I was prepared to defy orders to protect my…” He hesitated. “...’faithless whore’ I’d left behind.”

Rey leveled him with a dark, steadfast glare. “...your _what_.”

“They were his words, not mine.”

“You’ve near called me as such yourself a good half dozen times just today!”

Ben narrowed his eyes. “Faithless, yes. But I would never impugn your character so.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Rey countered.

“Rey,” he sighed.

Grumbling to herself, Rey crossed her arms and held her tongue.

Ben stared at her for a long moment before tapping his fingertips against a long, forked line curving along his sternum. “This was my punishment for my defense of you. The first part, at any rate. King Snoke is strong with the dark side of the Force — in time I learned it was his voice I’d heard whispering to me from the darkness all those years. I’d barely come to my feet and charged at him before he speared me through with lightning.”

Rey paled, staring at him in open horror even as she recalled twisting nightmares of Ben’s ghost being painfully shocked through just the previous night. “ _Lightning?_ Such a thing is possible with the Force?”

“The darkness has myriad powers,” Ben said quietly. “It gives, and it takes.”

Rey was quiet for a long moment. “First part,” she murmured. “What else did he do to you?”

Ben’s gaze drifted to Rey’s left hand, and he frowned deeply. “This is what I don’t understand,” he whispered. “I watched you become betrothed to that Resistance scoundrel. I saw it with my own eyes. But you’re not wearing his ring.”

Rey’s blood ran cold as his words registered. “...you said you didn’t come back.”

“I didn’t. Snoke opened the Force and showed me what you were doing, where you were.” He stared at Rey appraisingly, features drawn and haunted. “...I can show you, I think. Here.” He held out his hand across the fire, and his fingers were shaking. “Before, when I… when you saw my nightmares, I could show you when we touched. Through the Force.”

Rey hesitated for a long moment, curling her own hand close to her chest.

“...please,” Ben whispered, voice breaking.

Rey felt her heart constrict painfully in her chest as she reached out her own hand and gingerly pressed her fingertips to his.

In the space of a heartbeat, sharp as a whip crack, Rey was thrown headlong into Ben’s memories.

_Her_ memories.

And there, a month ago, clear as if she were seeing it with her own eyes, was Poe on bended knee with ring in hand, her past self with hands clasped to her mouth.

_I know… you’ve spent your whole life being afraid of anyone who gets close,_ Poe was saying, his voice a ghostly echo. _But I think that… if you’ll have me… Rey, would you…_

Rey’s eyes widened as the scene shifted away from the denial she knew had followed.

_Yes,_ she heard herself whisper, saw herself nod, before a deliriously happy Poe had hoisted her up into his arms, the two of them laughing, Rey’s arms tight around his shoulders.

_...the headaches_ , Rey realized in horror, her head spinning. She’d felt something that day, as she had on so many other days, a painful, insistent pulse through the Force, almost as if something were humming beneath her skin, hammering in her head.

Not the Force. Not just the Force.

It was the bond she shared with Ben, the one she’d thought long-destroyed in the wake of his death.  

And yet he hadn’t died. Ben Solo had perhaps been destroyed and beaten, but some fragment of him, of the warm connection they had once shared had survived.

And King Snoke, Rey realized, must have used it as a weak point of entry to find a path from Ben to the girl he’d once loved beyond words.

A path to _her_.

To use her memory, her waking moments to torture Ben with twisted images of half-lies and distortions. To build the narrative that she’d abandoned him to his fate as surely as she herself had been abandoned as a child.

_Ben…_ she whispered to herself, but then the images were coming, one after another, in a wretched dance of endless betrayal. Every time she’d smiled at one of Poe’s jokes. Every time he’d touched her cheek or kissed her hand. And every look he’d sent her way, even the ones she’d ignored, the ones she’d never even noticed.

All of it together, strung together into a distorted tale in which she’d fallen in love with another, accepted his ring and his heart even as Ben suffered and yearned for her under the mantle of the Dread Knight Ren.

That she’d forgotten him, even as he endlessly haunted her dreams.

It was the cruelest fate she could have imagined: far crueler than Ben being alive, than his being a willing hand in the service of the enemy, than the blood on his hands from countless villages burned and countless men slain.

Knowing that the only glimpses of her he’d had in three long years were filtered through a darkened lens at the hands of King Snoke, that he’d seen with his own eyes scenes of betrayal and heartbreak that had never occurred, that had led him to believe Rey’s heart no longer belonged to him, even as it bled endlessly for him.

It was too much to bear, far too much, and Rey felt hot tears slide down her cheeks as she gripped Ben’s hand tightly in hers. “That’s what you’ve been shown,” she said in a low, dark voice. “Let me show you what actually was.”

Ben started to speak and attempted to pull away from her hand, but Rey held him firmly, her eyes dark as the flames grew higher, as her fingers clutched his in a desperate grip.

_I’ll never love again,_ she’d said, with only the stars to hear her weep.

The Force tumbling dark and awful around her, deafening, and _Ben, please, I need you._

Sitting by another, far quieter fireside, looking to the man she didn’t yet know was Ben’s father and _Ben Solo of Alderaan, my intended_ and _together we’re less lonely, we understand each other, we help each other._

Ben made a sharp noise of pain in the back of his throat. Lightning crashed above them, and fat drops of rain began to spatter against their backs, into the fire.

Rey held him fast and pushed her memories even more firmly into his mind.

_I love Ben Solo with everything I am. And I know he loves me._

“I can’t…” Ben managed, attempting to pull away as the rain fell harder. “It’s not…”

Rey clutched his hand in a crushing grip, pressing back against the dark waves of the Force that seemed to wash over them in thick, heavy sheets and closing her eyes, tears and rainwater sluicing down her cheeks as she opened her heart as fully as she could.

_I don’t love you_ , a quiet whisper, full of conviction, a soft denial to a kind man who could never hold her heart.

_No._ Her steadfast response, Poe’s gentle acceptance, her refusal of his ring.

Her pledge to the resistance, her desire to watch the world burn in payment for the death of her beloved.

“No,” Ben said weakly, still struggling against her hold, “it didn’t… not like…”

The fire was little more than a damp pile of smoking wood as the rain grew harder, soaking them through. Lightning split a nearby gnarltree, and Ben’s hand jumped from her grasp.

_Lightning,_ Rey realized with dawning horror, staring at Ben’s unfocused eyes, the way he shook violently even as Rey drew him across the fire and struggled to hold him steady in her arms. _Snoke._

“Ben,” she sobbed, pressing her rain-dampened cheek to his, “Ben, I’m here, _see me_.”

She pressed harder, sending him the dreams she held most prized, the ones that warmed her on her loneliest, most painful nights.

Ben’s lips on hers as he kissed her the way he had beneath the stars of Alderaan, deep and passionate, lingering.

His hands slowly unraveling her armwraps, pushing up the soft fabric of her tunic, before reverently resting wide and warm on her breasts, his hands and mouth branding fire across her body.

And the feel of him, hot and heavy against her thigh, his mouth panting words of adoration into hers as they fell together, her hands tangled in his hair even as his ring glinted on her hand and they made rapturous love in their marriage bed.

“I want to hate you,” Rey sobbed, still clutching Ben even as the rain fell harder. “For destroying your family, for taking my home. For leaving me as your widow before I could ever be your bride. And…” She grasped his face in her hands. “...for loving you, even now, down to my bones, no matter if you still have the strength to love me.”

Ben’s eyes were wide and dark as Rey rushed forward and pressed her lips to his, hot and desperate.

They were soaked with rainwater, chilled to the bone, steam from the extinguished fire lashing strips of heat across their exposed skin.

_Please,_ Rey thought, holding Ben close as thunder rumbled around them. _Remember me… remember what we meant to each other…_

There was a heavy pounding in the distance, louder and louder.

_Please… gods above, please…_

Rey’s eyes flew open as a shaky hand carded through her hair, as another cupped her face and tilted her closer, as Ben’s lips warmed and he began to kiss her back with a sudden rush of passion.

One final strike of lightning speared through the gnarltree beside them, and Rey screamed as Ben quickly flipped her onto her back, rising up on hand and knee above her, still kissing her wildly even as sparks rained down around them.

_My Rey_ , she heard in a half-broken sob, strung across a bond bursting with stars, _my gods, my Rey._

“Ben,” Rey managed against his lips, bringing him down onto her and kissing his cheeks, his jaw, his sensitive ears that stuck out too far as his wet hair was slicked back. “Oh, Ben…”

The pounding was growing louder, a heavy, deafening beat, and Ben suddenly rose up on his arms above her, eyes wide as he scanned the swamp.

“Ben?” Rey asked, lips stinging pleasantly even as Ben’s features paled.

“...I’d forgotten,” he said, voice thick with fear. “I… I didn’t think they existed, it seemed too fantastic, and we should have seen them by now…”

“Ben, _what?_ ”

“There are three dangers in the Fire Swamp,” he said shortly, rising to his feet in the mud and rain and pulling Rey up beside him. “Of these we’ve already seen and survived two: the flame jets, and the lightning sands.”

They shared a brief glance before looking heavenwards, as the lightning seemed to settle into rolling sheets.

“What’s the third?” Rey asked in a half-whisper, clutching Ben’s hand.

The pounding grew louder, more insistent, and the gnarltrees shook down to the roots.

Ben quickly drew his sword as Rey called her staff to her hand.

“POUS’s. Porgs of Unusual Size,” Ben said in a dark voice. “Rabid, enormous beasts, or so they say.”

“What’s a Porg?”

“I’ve no idea. Something horrific, no doubt, at any size.”

“Ben…” Rey said, clutching his shoulder with her free hand and gazing up into his eyes. “I don’t… will he…” She glanced upwards to the flashing lightning. “Will you be harmed for standing at my side?”

Ben stared at her for a long moment, his right hand gripping the hilt of his sword as his left came up to cup Rey’s cheek.

“I would welcome no death more happily than one in the name of your safety,” he said in a rough voice before pressing another hot, harsh kiss to her lips.

Rey laid her free hand against his and turned her face in against it. “Ben…”

“Rey…”

“ _Squawk_.”

They turned very slowly, then up, up, _up,_ to see a towering white-and-gray mottled bird cocking its head at them from twenty feet up.

“...don’t move,” Ben said in a rough whisper, clutching Rey’s hand and preparing to move her behind him. “Maybe it can’t see us.”

The bird squawked again before taking another step forward.

“Well _so much for that_ ,” Rey hissed back at him, readying her staff as Ben spun his sword into attack position. “Ready? One… tw…”

Rey’s face fell as the bird began pecking the ground by the roots of the gnarltrees, happily scooping up an enormous, wriggling dragonsnake in its maw before thumping its way back through the trees with a series of contented chirps.

Rey stood unmoving for a long moment before finally looking up at Ben. “...Porgs of Unusual Size, you say,” she observed flatly. “ _Rabid, enormous beasts_ , you say.”

Ben grimaced, slipping his sword back into its scabbard. “Well, technically they _are_ carnivorous...” His eyes widened, and he grasped Rey’s hand. “And if you’ll look at the path it’s made…”

The rain had begun to lessen, and Rey stared through the parted gnarltrees to a rushing waterfall at the boundary of the swamp. “Fresh water,” she said, glancing up at the rain. “Though we’ve had more than enough of that for a bit.”

“There’s likely to be a cave nearby,” Ben said, briefly releasing Rey’s hand to gather his sodden armor from beside the extinguished fire. “We can build another fire and dry off. And then…”

Rey’s features were soft, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “Then?”

Ben hesitated before coming to stand before her again, resting his damp forehead against hers and nudging her cold nose with his.

“I’d like to see a few more of your dreams,” he said.

The shy smile he gave her could only belong to Ben Solo of Alderaan.


	6. Surrender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, this thing has a chapter count now! No promises about it not changing, but right now we're set at 11 chapters with an epilogue. Which, alas, means we're now halfway through (sadface). That being said, we really kick into The Princess Bride in Act III, with the Pit of Despair, storming the castle, a visit from a miracle man, and plenty of acts of true love. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit of downtime for our two reunited lovebirds before everything goes to hell again; I dearly hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> (NOTE: There is some M-rated touching and sexual content in this chapter. This is about as explicit as this fic will get because. You know. Space virgins.)

**Chapter Six: “Surrender”**

**\---**

In the three years since Ben had died, Rey had dreamed of him nearly every night.

Some of them were soft, gentle things, memories of being held warmly in the cradle of his arms, chaste kisses against her brow by the glow of starlight.

Some ran far warmer, the kind of dreams that left her squirming and panting as her mind spun visions of dark eyes and questing hands and clever lips in the marriage bed her beloved had never lived to see.

The cruelest were those where she stood in her mourning clothes at the Alderaan estate only to see Ben suddenly appear at the horizon, whole and hale, risen from the dead and with eyes only for her. She’d run as fast as her legs could carry her, launching herself into his arms as he whispered feverish apologies and promised her that they’d never be apart again.

She’d dreamed a thousand scenarios where Ben had survived, a thousand and one where he’d come home to her.

She’d never quite imagined a cold rain, sinking to her ankles in the mud with Ben clutching her hand like a lifeline, the two of them hoisting heavy blood-spattered armor between them and stumbling along a marshland path by the glow of bioluminescent moss and dimmed, rolling flashes of thunder at the horizon.

She’d never dreamed that she’d be exhausted beyond words, sick with thirst and the emotional turmoil of facing endless tragedy over the last weeks.

“Rey,” she heard from her right, felt a soft squeeze of her hand, and looked up to see a gentle, pronounced concern in Ben’s eyes. “Just a little farther, sweetheart.”

Rey’s lower lip trembled as a watery smile spread across her features, as twin tears slipped down her cheeks.

No, she’d never imagined this.

She’d never imagined it could be _real._

\---

The Porg’s waddling, thumping walk had uprooted enough trees to create a small clearing, and the air flickered with the light of fireflies and the glow of bioluminescent moss around a rushing waterfall. It was dark, too dark to see if any predators lurked around the slick black rocks, but the water was cool and clear.

Ben drank greedily from its pool, cupping his hands together and taking long, deep draughts, and Rey’s heart turned over with a swell of sympathy. Her own drinks were more measured — still a desert girl to her bones and far more accustomed to thirst than her erstwhile prince.

“Hand me your knife,” Ben said after he’d finally drunk his fill, tugging a fibrous plant from the edge of the pool.

Rey hesitated, slipping the knife from beneath her armwrap and handing it to him gingerly.

Ben raised an eyebrow before taking a deep breath and nodding. “I know. I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

Rey frowned. “It’s not that,” she said hesitantly, “it’s just…”

She closed her eyes. _I know, that’s why I’m giving it to you_. Han’s crooked smile, the twin of which she’d seen and loved so deeply in his son…

Ben was quiet as he turned the knife over in his hand. “Corellian steel,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Rey said softly. “It was given to me by a Corellian.”

She heard Ben’s slow, deep inhale beside her, and her eyes opened at the feel of cool metal placed gently into her palm.

“Keep it,” he said, and his voice was tight. “I think he would have wanted it that way.”

Rey felt an all-too familiar warmth pricking at the corners of her eyes. “We’ve no way of knowing now.” She splashed cool water from the pool on her face, shaking her head in an attempt to clear it. “What’ve you got there?”

Ben said nothing, roughly tearing the plant in his hand down the middle and exposing twin rows of small seeds. “Yarum seeds,” he said shortly. “Not much and certainly not what you’d call tasty, but they’re edible. I recognize them from my studies with...” He paused, swallowing hard.

Rey wordlessly handed him the knife again, studiously avoiding the tears that seemed to spring forth again and seemed reflected in Ben’s eyes. She watched as he carefully pried the seeds from the starchy fibrous plant and collected a generous handful.

“Here,” he said softly, tipping half the seeds into her hand. “You need to eat.”

Rey plucked one of the seeds from her palm and placed it on her tongue, grimacing at the bitter taste. “Ugh.”

“Still better than starving.”

“Easy enough for a prince to say,” Rey retorted, but there was no venom in it.

They sat facing each other, knees touching, as they quietly ate their seeds. The rain had dissipated into a fine mist, and Rey’s eyes were hooded with exhaustion as the yarum seeds burst open on her tongue.

“Tired?” Ben murmured, stroking the thumb of his free hand against her temple as she nodded. “There’s a cave beside the waterfall, there on the far side. There should be shelter enough for us for the night. I’ll find some knattik-root, see if we can start another fire.”

“Don’t want to sleep,” Rey murmured, even as her eyes drooped. “Don’t want to…”

She closed her eyes as she felt Ben’s arms come gingerly around her, felt the cool dampness of his cheek against the crown of her head.

“I promise I’ll be here when you wake,” Ben said softly, and she could feel a warmth through the Force as his fingers stroked along her jawline, a drowsy, easy feeling that left her soft and boneless in his arms. “Sleep now, beautiful.”

Everything slowly faded into nothingness.

\---

Rey woke groggily, stretching her limbs and pushing up on her elbows as she looked around at her surroundings. There was a muted rush of water in the distance, a slow, echoing drip far closer, and she could make out the mouth of a cave a few meters away.

There was a roaring fire nearby, and she rubbed her eyes blearily at the sight of Ben poking its center. “You didn’t sleep long, even with the Force,” he observed, not looking at her.

Rey grimaced, opening her mouth to retort, only to yelp as she glanced down and realized she was clad only in her thin shift, eyes widening at the sight of her clothes spread out on the far side of the fire along with Ben’s surcoat and tunic.

“Ben!” she yelped, scrambling back and crossing her arms over her chest.

Ben held his hands up in surrender, cheeks flushed deeply in the light of the fire. “Before you kill me where I stand, I neither touched nor saw anything untoward. I just wanted to get you out of your wet dress before you caught your death of cold.”

Rey pressed her fingertips into her ribs, breathing heavily, her own cheeks crimson as she flexed her bare toes against the cool rock floor of the cave. Ben was still bared to the waist, his boots neatly lined up beside hers and his own clothes, and there was something overwhelmingly intimate to it, both of them half-dressed, bathed in firelight and not quite able to meet each other’s eyes.

Ben cleared his throat, standing and moving around the fire to press one hand to his tunic where it lay on the ground. “Dry enough,” he muttered, bunching it in his hand and holding it out to her with a question in his eyes.

Keeping one arm crossed protectively over her chest, Rey stood and came to his side, her fingertips just brushing his knuckles as she took the proffered tunic. “Thank you,” she murmured, slipping the tunic over her head. It was almost comically large, the all-black sleeves extending past her fingertips and the hem reaching nearly to her knees.

There was something bright and warm in Ben’s eyes, a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips, and Rey’s heart turned over at the sight of it. “What?” she asked, struggling to hold back her own smile, tugging self-consciously at the hem of the tunic.

Ben shook his head, averting his eyes even as his blush deepened. “Nothing,” he said after a moment. “I just…”

Rey tilted her head in confusion.

“...you look nice in my clothes,” Ben finished. “Better than… than I’d dreamed.”

Rey toyed with the ends of the tunic’s sleeves. “You dreamed of me?” she whispered, and she reached out, her fingertips just brushing the hot skin of his torso.

His abdominal muscles trembled, and Ben gently laid his hand over hers. “Every night,” he said quietly. “It was as if… it was something dear and precious to hold for myself in between the shadows of nightmares.

Rey was shaking even as she stroked his skin, moving her hand to notch her thumb over the bared curve of his hipbone. “What did you dream of?” she asked, and she mentally kicked herself at how breathless and desirous her voice sounded.

She squeaked as Ben’s arms came tight around her, as his mouth slotted firmly to hers. His hands seemed restless, stroking her hair, thumbs charting the notches of her spine, the wings of her shoulderblades.

Rey leaned into his touch, exploring his bared skin even as she suddenly felt warm beneath his tunic. He was all solid, hardened muscle — _from warfare_ , some traitorous part of her mind supplied, _as a soldier of Coruscant, the enemy_ , and she pushed it feverishly aside — with just enough softness to give beneath her curious palm, to cradle and warm her as he drew her closer into his arms and laid her back against the ground, not breaking the kiss.

Her eyes flew open at the feel of his tongue gently stroking along hers, but it seemed so natural somehow to tangle her hands in his hair (that _hair_ , so soft, and such a shame that he’d seen fit to cover it with a helm for so long) and tilt her head to deepen the kiss, to cant her hips towards his in search of something she couldn’t begin to name.

The kiss ended abruptly as Ben pulled away, breathing hard, his arms still tight around her shoulders. “Rey,” he managed in a rough voice, “this… we can’t do this.”

Rey frowned, pressing herself closer and flushing as she felt a telltale hardness growing against her belly. She and Ben had never lain together, but they’d spent more than a few warm summer nights curiously exploring each other’s flesh, and she knew full well what the swelling against her abdomen meant.

“Ben,” she said, voice thick with longing, rolling her hips against him and grinning as he dropped his head to her shoulder and bit back a low curse. “We’re together now. Nothing’s stopping us.”

She took a deep breath and stroked her hand down across the front of his trousers, gently squeezing with clever fingers.

“Rey,” Ben said in a strangled voice even as he helplessly thrust into her hand. “Rey. Stop. Please.”

She frowned and pulled her hand away, features dark with hurt, a question in her eyes.

Ben’s eyes were light with contrition as he gently kissed her forehead, peppered kisses across her brow, her cheeks, the line of her jaw. “It’s not that I don’t want you,” he murmured. He hesitated, then rolled his hips against her, groaning softly. “I… very, _very_ much want you.”

“Then why can’t we?” Rey asked stubbornly.

Ben cupped his hand around her cheek, resting his forehead against hers. “Because the first time I make love to you,” he said in a strained voice, “it will be in our marriage bed, in a warm room with beautiful tapestries, my beautiful wife bare and wanting beneath me.”

“Well good for her,” Rey groused.

Ben sighed and nudged her nose with his. “Rey,” he said softly.

“You know, technically you’ve made me wait three years to marry you. We should already have made love a thousand times by now. And since it’s your fault we’re behind schedule…”

Ben groaned as Rey’s thumbs stroked across the notches of his hipbones, dragging him down to lie flush between her legs.

“...this,” she managed breathlessly as she slowly rolled her hips against his. “Remember?”

Ben hesitated, then nodded, breathing hard against her ear.

It had been a late summer’s eve, the night of the annual Alderaanian meteor shower, and they’d lain together among the gingerbells and counted the stars.

“What are you wishing for?” Ben had asked her, and Rey had frowned in confusion. “Each star is a wish,” he clarified.

She’d smiled and pinned Ben back by his shoulders, stroking his hair away from his forehead. “I already have everything I need,” she’d said softly, leaning down to kiss him.

They’d ultimately missed the rest of the meteor shower as they’d instead explored each other by starlight. She’d learned that Ben’s body was speckled with moles; he’d learned that she had a two-inch-long scar along her thigh from where she’d been burned in the scrapyard as a child.

And together they’d found a new kind of pleasure, rutting against each other in the gingerbells, whispered words of love echoing beneath the stars.

Three years later, and her body remembered Ben’s as if they’d slotted together a hundred times instead of just once, and Rey clung to his back as he inhaled on a deep, shaky breath and moved against her.

“...Ben,” she managed, gasping as something in her crested higher and higher. “Ben!”

He kissed her deeply as she fell to pieces, stroking her shoulder, her back, whispering soft words of love and devotion as she shuddered and clung to him.

She felt boneless, spent, as Ben straightened his tunic around her and turned her onto her side, curling up warmly along her back and wrapping his arms around her middle.

“I love you, Ben,” she murmured, dazed and sated, twining their fingers together.

She felt a warm, lingering kiss against the back of her neck, a tender nuzzle.

“I know,” he said softly.

\---

_Her dreams were once more shadowed, and Rey wrapped her arms tightly around herself, burrowing into Ben’s tunic against the sudden cold._

_“Stealing the boy’s armor as surely you tried to steal his heart, eh, girl?” Her eyes widened at the low, oily laugh that echoed around her from an unseen source. “So unwise. So foolish. Do you truly believe Ben Solo has crawled back to you? That the man you loved has risen from the grave, intact and unharmed?”_

_Something constricted tightly around her throat, and Rey clawed and kicked at the unseen force holding her still and choking her._

_“Kylo Ren is mine, Rey of Jakku,” the dark voice whispered. “Stand in my way and his face will be the last thing you see.”_

_\---_

Rey woke gasping, kicking blindly, her hands tearing at her throat.

“Rey,” she heard Ben saying beside her, felt his large hands holding down her flailing arms. “Rey, sweetheart, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“...he was there,” she gasped, breathing hard and struggling against his hold. “He was… he’s going to take you away from me again…”

Ben shushed her, carefully pulling her into a tight embrace. “No one’s going to take me away from you ever again,” he said in a low, dark voice. “Not even Death himself could tear us apart. Not again.”

“But…”

“Shh.” He gently rocked her back and forth. “We’re together. Nothing’s going to happen to you. To us.”

Rey willed her heart to settle, slowing her breathing and nodding quickly. She closed her eyes and let herself lean into Ben’s embrace. “Same goes for me,” she said quietly. “It might be difficult for you in the resistance first, but few will know your face without your helm, and between your mother and me there’ll…”

Rey frowned as Ben suddenly went stiff beneath her, his arms tightening a fraction. “Ben?”

“Who said we were going to the resistance,” he said in a low voice.

Rey blinked. “I… just assumed…”

“That I’d march willingly to my death at the hands of the people I spent years helping to burn and slaughter?” Ben said tightly.

“Like your mother and I would allow you to be killed, when we’ve yet to finish mourning you the first time.” Rey frowned deeply and disentangled herself from his embrace. “Ben. You’ll always have a place with me. Always.”

She cupped his face in her hands, forcing him to meet her gaze. “I’ll help you,” she insisted in a soft voice. “Wherever we go, whatever dangers we face. I’ll always stand by your side.”

Ben frowned, and Rey’s heart clenched painfully as she realized he didn’t believe her.

 _Kylo Ren is mine, Rey of Jakku_.

“...what if we left it all behind,” Ben said quietly. “Coruscant. Alderaan. The resistance. Just let everything die and start over, just the two of us.”

“The war won’t stop just because we love each other, Ben.” She slipped his tunic over her head and handed it back to him with a frown. “Coruscant still needs to be stopped.”

“Even if it did, you think we could stop it by ourselves?” His eyes followed her as she re-tied her arm wraps and slipped her dress over her head. “You’re not a fool, Rey.”

_So foolish…_

“It wouldn’t be just us,” she insisted. “We could… we could build something new together, with the help of the resistance. We could stop Coruscant’s reign of terror, see peace in the realm again.”

“You underestimate King Snoke,” Ben said bluntly, donning his surcoat and tunic, features stony.

Rey clutched his sleeve, turning him to face her. “Perhaps,” she said, “but I believe in _you_.”

Ben hesitated in dressing, reaching out to stroke one shaky thumb across her cheekbone. “Come on,” he said softly. “We’d best get a move on, find the exit to the swamp.”

Rey was quiet. “And when we do…” She hesitated. “Will I still be your prisoner?”

Ben flashed her a hint of a smile as he finished tugging on his armor. “I’ve always been yours.”

“ _Ben_.” She wasn’t smiling. “Answer me truly. We’ve been blessed with these moments together beyond the reach of those who might tear us apart. But who will greet me in the morning light: Prince Ben of Solo, or the Dread Knight Ren?”

Ben furrowed his brow. “The Dread Knight Ren was always just a title,” he began slowly, “a symbol neither beginning nor ending with me. Now that we’re together, I’ll cede its mantle to someone else. We can disappear, forge a life together outside the confines of other’s expectations.”

Rey frowned. It sat poorly with her, the idea of fleeing away from the war, of allowing Coruscant’s reign to continue unabated, their slaughter to be unstemmed.

She loved Ben with everything she had, down to her very soul.

And yet…

Ben’s eyes were soft and sad as the Force warmed around her, as the bond hummed, and she knew he felt her reservations.

“Come on,” he said quietly, taking her hand.

She let him, while she knew she still could.

\---

There was a loud squawk as they left the cave and stepped into the humid morning air of the Fire Swamp, and Ben quickly drew his sword.

Rey rolled her eyes and shoved his shoulder as a Porg waddled into the clearing with heavy, tree-shaking steps.

“They’re actually rather cute,” Rey said with a small smile, slipping her staff across her chest. “Now put that away before you scare it.”

“...Rey, it’s _twenty feet tall._ ”

“And you’re _upsetting_ it,” Rey said shortly, reaching across to remove his sword from his hand and slip it back into its scabbard. “Don’t worry, my love,” she cooed to the Porg.

“Your love is rather perturbed at the moment.”

Rey rolled her eyes again. “Hush, you. Do you imagine it knows the way out of the swamp?”

“Why don’t you ask it?” Ben said sarcastically. “Since you’re so keen on one another.”

“Green is a poor color on you, Ben Solo.”

Ben grumbled and crossed his arms across his chest.

Rey shot him a soft smile before reaching out one tentative hand, up and up and _up,_ feeling the Force flowing through her veins, echoing in her heartbeats, filling her fully.

The Porg’s mind was a simple thing, unconcerned with much beyond its next meal, and Rey gently shuffled through its memories, following a cleared path to an open forest, all silvered branches and dappled greens.

It was close, perhaps half a mile west, and Rey smiled as she lowered her hand. “Thank you,” she murmured to the Porg.

It squawked happily at Rey before hopping away with an insouciance that was somewhat undercut by the cracking gnarltrees falling to the ground in its wake.

Rey inclined her head in the opposite direction. “This way.”

She started at the look in Ben’s eyes, something soft and awed in their depths. “Ben?”

“The Force,” he said quietly, and he reached up to graze his fingertips across her temple. “You’re getting stronger. It’s…” He hesitated. “...you’re beautiful.”

Rey crooked a grin at him, feeling her cheeks warm. She could almost pretend that they could stay like this, unconcerned with the outside world, together and happily in love here in the Fire Swamp.

“Should we go?” Ben asked.

Rey hesitated, glancing from him to the retreating Porg.

“We should,” she said after a long moment, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat.

\---

The humidity slowly faded into the cool, crisp air of a deep forest, and the gnarltrees gave way to towering oak and birch.

The Force seemed… lighter, almost, like whatever dark uneasiness had existed within the twisting mists of the Fire Swamp had dissipated once they stood outside its hold.

“We made it,” Rey breathed, squeezing Ben’s hand.

“That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

Rey pursed her lips in irritation and shot him a pointed glance. “I’m writing ‘shall never again feed me yarum seeds’ into our wedding vows. And the minute we’re married, we are making love. _Often_.”

Ben smiled at her, drawing her into his arms and nosing at her temple. “As you wish,” he murmured, tilting Rey’s face up for a kiss.

He stopped suddenly a hair’s breadth from her lips, face going pale and tight.

Rey’s brow furrowed in confusion until she heard it, there in the distance.

Hoofbeats.

Moving fast.

\---

They ran, hand-in-hand, and Rey struggled to keep up with Ben’s long legs and frantic pace.

He swung her to a stop at the base of a towering oak, breathing hard. “Can you still climb?” he asked in a rush.

Rey stared at him in disbelief.

“Can you _climb?_ ” Ben repeated. “You were always a deft hand at it, can you still do it?”

Rey shook her head in confusion. “How do you know I’m good at climbing?”

“In Alderaan,” Ben said quietly. “Before we… I’d see you climbing chinar-trees after you’d finished your work in the fields sometimes. You were so spry, easily scaling to the highest branches, and then…” He paused, closing his eyes. “You’d have the sun on your face, and you would smile, and you looked like you had the world in your palms, you were so happy.”

Ben stroked a hand through her hair. “I knew I loved you before that. But if I’d had any doubts, they disappeared at the sight of you in the sunlight, there in the trees.”

Rey laid her hand over his. “Ben…”

“Those hoofbeats,” he said shortly, breaking the softness of the moment. “I’d recognize the Coruscant cadence anywhere. We’ve taken too long — King Snoke will have sent reinforcements to collect us.”

Rey paled at the name of the king. At the word “us”.

Narrowing her eyes, she quickly pulled her staff from her back and hoisted it into an attack position. “Then we’ll stand and fight together,” she said, gritting her teeth. “I’ll not let them take you.”

“Rey.”

She started as Ben pressed the tip of her staff down. “Climb. Hide yourself. I’ll go with them and buy us time.”

Rey’s mouth dropped open in surprise, her shoulders going slack. “...you’re going _back?_ ” she asked incredulously. “To… to _him?_ To the place that already tore us apart once?”

“To placate a king who wants you dead, or worse,” Ben said hotly. “I would face the fires of hell a thousand times before I’d let Snoke lay his hands on you.”

“Then fight with me!” Rey said in a tight, desperate whisper. “Between the two of us…”

“...we’ll have enough force to dispatch perhaps three or four of them before the others destroy us,” Ben finished. “Rey. _Please_.”

Rey swallowed hard, her eyes burning. “Ben,” she managed, voice thick with tears, “I lost you once and it almost destroyed me.”

“As it did me,” Ben said softly. He pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. “I couldn’t bear to lose you again. Not when I could save you.”

Rey clung to his shoulders and rose up on her tiptoes to kiss him deeply, Ben’s hands tangling in her hair, his body cleaving to hers for one last, lingering moment.

The hoofbeats grew louder, and they broke apart, breathing hard.

“I’ll come for you,” Rey said quickly, not bothering to dash away the tears on her cheeks. “Ben, I swear it by everything I hold dear, I _will_ come for you.”

Ben pressed a hot, harsh kiss to her forehead. “ _Climb,_ ” he said insistently.

Rey hesitated for a long moment before shutting her eyes, slinging her staff across her back, and quickly beginning her ascent.

She had barely reached the crown of the towering oak before a column of riders burst into view, nine black-clad knights on black horses led by a red-haired man sitting bolt-upright in the saddle of his immaculately-brushed stallion.

“Ren,” the man sneered, leaning forward but not deigning to dismount.

Rey felt her heart clench painfully at the sight of Ben standing so straight, an easy disdain and cool arrogance radiating from him through the Force, and she knew that the Dread Knight Ren had returned.

“Hux,” Ben said coolly. “How kind of you to join me.”

“Where’s the girl?”

Rey watched as Ben gestured to his face. “We’ve underestimated her. She was able to surprise me with the foul end of a knife — we fought, but she gained the upper hand and gave me this before escaping.”

The red-haired man scoffed. “Escaped? In the Fire Swamp?”

“She’s strong in the Force,” she heard Ben murmur. “Untrained, but stronger than she knows.”

The red-haired man pulled a face, glancing back at the column of knights behind him. “King Snoke is exceptionally displeased with you,” he said. Then, he smiled, a cold, humorless thing. “I can only hope he’ll see fit to allow me to watch your punishment.”

The man rested one hand against the neck of his horse, and Rey’s blood ran cold.

He had six fingers on his sword hand.

 _Finn_ , she thought, clutching her hand to her mouth, eyes wide.

There was a warm caress through the Force, a bittersweet farewell as the red-haired man led Ben away.

Rey held it close, feeling her heart pound fit to burst as the sound of hoofbeats once again sounded, slowly fading into the distance.

Soon, there was nothing but the sounds of the forest around her.

Rey willed her breathing to slow, her jaw to set.

Her next steps were obvious, as difficult as they might be, and Rey ticked them off on her fingers as she tapped her foot against the nearest branch beneath her.

One: find Finn and Chewbacca again and enlist their help.

Two: use their help to infiltrate Coruscant, rescue Ben, and find the vengeance Finn had sought for years.

Three: somehow get _out_ of Coruscant alive.

She hesitated.

Four: marry Ben and finally make love to him.

(She didn’t have to share that part of the plan with the rest of the team.)

Rey started as the branch beneath her foot suddenly gave way with a sharp crack, tearing through a long series of branches on its way down, leaving her staring at many, many feet of trunk.

Rey sighed heavily, adding another tick.

_One-half:_

_Get out of this tree._


End file.
